 |
| High Lea Cottage and High Lea Farm |
Having temporarily lost my way on Spout House Hill, due to the lack of signage on the public footpaths, I retraced my steps to the well crafted stone stile that I had discovered earlier in my walk and headed across the field down towards the hamlet of Brightholmlee.
 |
| The approach to Brightholmlee |
As always on my walks, I kept my eye out for interesting historic buildings to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website, with my first subject being a gritstone guide pillar on the corner of Brightholmlee Road/Thorn House Lane, which could probably do with the help of the Milestone Society to undertake its repainting.
 |
| The guide pillar in Brightholmlee |
On the opposite corner of Brightholmlee Road, the early C18 Rose Cottage is notable mainly for its substantial angled buttresses that straddle a ditch on its northern elevation and an example of squared and gritty sandstone, which would have been quarried nearby.
 |
| Angled buttresses at Rose Cottage |
The 1855 edition of the Ordnance Survey map marks the nearest quarry as being just over 400 metres to the west, which is located on the Huddersfield White Rock – a coarse sandstone that is equivalent to the Chatsworth Grit in the southern part of South Yorkshire. This sandstone was used in the construction of the reservoirs in the Ewden Valley in the first quarter of the C20, but this rock formation does not appear to have been widely quarried in earlier times.
The Spout Hill Quarries on the Rough Rock are further away, but produced flagstones for roofing as well as building stone and Brightholmlee itself is largely sited on a sandstone from the Marsden Formation, which is of very variable grain size and has no reputation for producing building stone.
 |
| Coursed and squared drystone walling on Thorn House Lane |
I didn’t spend any time closely inspecting any of the building stones used and only took a few general photos of the buildings, which the Conservation Area Review of 2007 considers to be an exceptional grouping of four essentially unaltered farms and cottages.
 |
| High Lea Cottage and High Lea Farm |
High Lea Cottage and High Lea Farm, the first of the three Grade II Listed buildings that I encountered, date back at least to the C17 and are cruck framed with coursed and squared gritstone walls. The cottage at the west end has simple mullioned windows typical of the period and both this and the farmhouse have traditional stone slate roofs.
 |
| Gritstone drinking troughs on Thorn House Lane |
Directly opposite the farm and cottage, there are two large drinking troughs - fashioned from blocks of massive gritstone – which are presumably fed by a spring that flows from the junction of sandstone and mudstone on the higher ground to the south of the hamlet.
 |
| The west and east barns on Thorn House Lane |
A little further down Thorn House Lane, the roadside barns and their miscellaneous outbuildings are also Grade II Listed but, like very many agricultural buildings that I have seen on my travels, are in a state of advanced dilapidation.
 |
| General views of the Grade II Listed barns on Thorn House Lane |
To the rear of these barns, I could just see the north elevation of the Old Hall Farmhouse which, at the time of my visit, had its windows boarded up and looked like that it had also been neglected and was in need of some restoration.
 |
| A view of the north elevation of the Old Hall Farmhouse |
Even though I have not had much involvement in the industry since living in South Yorkshire, my working background in building restoration in London has never escaped me and, with my curiosity getting the better of me, I wanted to see if there was any work being done to the building.
 |
| A general view of the north elevation of Old Hall Farmhouse |
Being very aware that some people have been very suspicious when seeing me taking photographs of their properties, I just took a few quick snaps of the roofing work in progress at Old Hall Farmhouse and another unlisted barn further down the road, before continuing down Thorn House Lane back to Wharncliffe Side.
 |
| An unlisted barn on Thorn House Lane |
No comments:
Post a Comment