An Afternoon in Aston - Part 1

 

The south elevation of Aston Hall Hotel

From the beginning of March until the end of October 2021, my investigation of the Sheffield Board Schools kept me busy to the extent that 14 months later, on the 1st January 2023, I am still at least a month away from finishing my reports on my travels for the year in this Language of Stone Blog – so far requiring 250 posts, 135,000 words and more than 2000 photographs. 

 

A Google Map view of Treeton and Aston

With very many buildings on the British Listed Buildings website still to photograph, particularly in areas that I had never been to in Sheffield, although I didn’t expect to get out too much in November and December, I kept my eye on the weather and, a couple of days after I spent an afternoon in Norton, I hopped on the X54 bus in Treeton and less than 15 minutes later I was in Aston and taking photos of the gateway to Aston Hall. 

 

The gateway to Aston Hall

Knowing from a previous visit to All Saints church that Aston Hall (c1772) is built in Permian dolomitic limestone, I wasn’t surprised to see that it in the large central sections of the gatepiers to the road entrance, but I didn’t expect to see a sandstone with very strong iron banding and Liesegang rings used for the cappings and for the adjacent mid C19 lodge. 

 

The lodge to Aston Hall

Having spent a lot of time in Rotherham and the villages that are set on the reddened variety of the Mexborough Rock, specifically to look at the stone used in the mediaeval churches and historic buildings, I can’t recall seeing any other stone used as an alternative to the locally quarried Rotherham Red sandstone for buildings such as this. 

 

Aston Hall

The architect for Aston Hall, John Carr, who also designed Clifton House (1783), presumably knew that Rotherham Red sandstone was not a first class building stone - due largely to the very common inclusions of clay ironstone nodules and wide colour variations – when specifying the materials to be used in these buildings. 

 

The north elevation of Aston Hall

With many cars arriving at what is now a hotel and wedding venue, I didn’t introduce myself at the reception as I had done at the Mosborough Hall Hotel and just had a very quick wander around its exterior to take a few quick snaps. 

 

The north elevation of the extension to Aston Hall

Although I was very conscious that my movements around the hotel might attract the attention of security cameras etc and didn’t stop to closely examine the stone used to build the new west extension of the hotel, from my photographs I can detect pale blue/grey variations within it - a characteristic that is not typical of the dolomitic limestones from the Permian Cadeby Formation, but which is a feature of the Ancaster weatherbed limestone from Lincolnshire.

 

The extension to Aston Hall