A Walk From Throapham to Laughton

 

A view of All Saints church in Laughton-en-le-Morthen

In the first week of August, a few days after I had explored Woodseats, Abbey Lane and Abbeydale Road in Sheffield, to look at its historic architecture and geology, my next day out involved a long walk in the Rotherham countryside – starting at St. John’s church in Throapham.

 

St. John's church in Throapham

Several weeks earlier, I had obtained access to the interior of the church and then followed the Magnesian Limestone escarpment southward to Dinnington and North Anston, but this time my plan was to head north to Brookhouse, Carr and Hooton Levitt before finishing at Maltby.

 

The geology between Throapham and Maltby

The first leg my walk followed the footpath that runs clockwise around the village of Laughton-en-le-Morthen, set on the edge of an outlier of the Permian Cadeby Formation, which passes down into calcareous mudstone at its base and is underlain by the Yellow Sands Formation.

 

An Ordnance Survey map of Laughton-en-le.Morthen

The path that I followed cuts across a field with sandy soil and an abundance of rounded pebbles which, although not marked on the geological map, are the remnants of a glaciofluvial deposit similar to those seen during walks from Letwell to Maltby earlier in the year and around the Chesterfield Canal the year before, but I didn’t stop to collect further specimens.

 

The path from Throapham to Laughton-en-le-Morthen

Arriving at Hangsman Lane at the point where it turns into School Lane, the slope of the escarpment here is quite obvious – as seen by the angle which the road forms with the boundary wall of Laughton Junior and Infant School, where anchor plates indicate that there is some structural instability here.

 

Laughton Junior and Infant School

Crossing the road and walking up a set of steps to follow the footpath, which here follows the line of the calcareous mudstone where old maps mark it being at the edge of a sand pit on Marl Pit Hill, I was hoping to see some sign of the underlying bedrock or at least an expression of it in the soil/subsoil; however, the path ran for a few hundred metres through thick hedging that at times formed a canopy and I couldn't see anything on either side.

 

The site of the old quarry in Laughton-en-le-Morthen

I then arrived at an open field that was marked as a sandstone quarry on the 1854 Ordnance Survey map, but which had disappeared by the 1903 edition. Presumably the Yellow Sands Formation was worked here for moulding sand, as in other parts of the village, but the overlying limestone from the Cadeby Formation was probably used in houses for the village.

 

A small exposure of dolomitic limestone

The area has now been largely -landscaped and grassed over, but the occasional outcrop of thinly bedded limestone can still be seen sticking out from the side of the shallow quarry. From one of these I used my Estwing hammer to chip off a couple of small samples, which are cream coloured, granular and have a relict oolitic texture with occasional shell fragments.

 

Samples of dolomitic limestone

Continuing along the footpath, I found a vantage point from which to take a photograph of Castle Hill, the well preserved remains of the motte and bailey castle that was erected by Roger de Busli, who was granted the manor of Tickhill after the Norman Conquest in 1066.

 

Castle Hill