A Brief Exploration of Spout House Hill

 

An old quarry on the Rough Rock at Spout House Hill

At Spout House Hill, having already discovered that one sign for a public footpath may have gone missing and another had been deliberately defaced, the continuation of my planned walk hit a setback when I found that yet another path was not signposted and I got a little bit lost.

 

The unmarked path to Spout House Wood

The grassy path skirting the plateau of Rough Rock that I had been following turned into a track that continued for another 50 metres, before reaching a junction of the track with a path, which are both roughly surfaced with sandstone that looks like it has been recently laid.

 

The 1905 map showing quarries on Spout House Hill

Old Ordnance Survey maps indicate that this plateau has been extensive quarried in the past and, when looking on Google Map, the tracks to many of the old quarries seem to have been maintained for access by the landowner.

 

A Google Map view showing old quarries on Spout House Hill

I assumed that the sandstone used for the tracks is from one of these old quarries and therefore the Rough Rock, which I did not have in my rock collection. The sample that I obtained is pale buff in colour, fine/medium grained and has discernable bedding planes and, when viewed with a hand lens, contains a significant amount of weathered feldspar but only very occasional grains of unweathered iron bearing minerals.

 

Views of the sample taken from the track

 

Ignoring what I now to believe to be the public footpath that I wanted, I continued along the track and almost immediately came across a small old quarry, where there are good exposures of massive beds of Rough Rock that have distinct iron staining on the exposed joints.

 

An old quarry on the Rough Rock at Spout House Hill

 

This time I had to use my Estwing hammer to obtain a sample, which is medium to occasionally very coarse grained and, when viewed with a hand lens, is seen to contain feldspar and a considerable amount of weathered iron bearing minerals.

 

A specimen of Rough Rock from an old quarry on Spout House Hill

Continuing along the track, which now passed across an open area of semi-moorland, I realised that I had lost the public footpath. With the sunny June weather now looking ominously like it might be turning into heavy rain, I was very conscious that I needed to find a path that would get me off this exposed high ground before I became soaked to the skin.

 

A view of the top of Spout House Hill

Looking on the screenshot of the Ordnance Survey map that I had with me, I could see no obvious way to carry on with my walk without crossing private land and it has been the only time on my walks that I would have benefited from having a full sized map or even a compass.

A panoramic view to the north of Spout House Hill

On this occasion, rather than risk the wrath of the local landowners who I had begun to suspect didn’t want people like me walking across their land, I decided to make a retreat and further investigate the area around More Hall Reservoir at another time.

 

An old quarry on the north side of Spout House Hill