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| A bell pit in Bray Plantation |
Shortly after my last outing of 2021, to investigate the geology of the Waverley Estate in Rotherham, I posted a few photographs online and immediately received various comments about the educational value of the interesting rock specimens and fossils that I had found.
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| Wave Magazine |
Thinking about this a little bit more, I contacted Wave Magazine and suggested that the residents of the Waverley Estate, and the new school, might appreciate a short article on the subject. Having had such a busy time in 2020, which required 280 Language of Stone Blog posts, with 150,000 words and a few thousand photographs – including surveys of all the remaining Sheffield Board Schools - the idea is running 14 months late, but this fitting in well with my current work schedule.
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| An Ordnance Survey map of the area around Grange Park |
For my first day out in 2022, having got the Christmas and New Year festivities out of the way, I asked my next door neighbour Dan, who had accompanied me on trips to Treeton Wood and Rawmarsh, if he wanted to have a look at the area around Grange Park in Kimberworth.
The Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation (PLCMF) strata above the Penistone Flags contain several coal and ironstone seams, which have been exploited wherever they occur in South Yorkshire, with the latter being mined by the monks of Kirkstead Abbey back in the C12.
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| The 1949 Ordnance Survey map of Kimberworth |
In early spring 2021, I had a good walk around this part of Rotherham, where there is still evidence of these industries and the quarrying of sandstone – although the construction of the M1 motorway and C20 landscaping has obliterated most of the features that are marked on the Ordnance Survey maps from 1854 to 1949.
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| Bell pits shown on the LIDAR map |
On this occasion, I was interested in the various bell pits that are shown on the LIDAR map alongside the Upper Wortley Road, which tantalisingly omits the land owned by the Wentworth-Fitzwilliam Estate. The regular layout of the bell pits here is very similar to the Scheduled Monument at Hood Hill, which Historic England describe as deep shaft workings that were a characteristic of coal mining from the 18th century onwards.
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| Views of bell pits in Bray Plantation |
Walking through Bray Plantation, we wandered off the public footpath a couple of times to look at a few bell pits, before continuing up Upper Wortley Road to see Keppel’s Column, which was shrouded in scaffold at the time.
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| Keppel's Column |
Retracing our steps back to the Grange Golf Club, we continued down to the clubhouse across the underlying Silkstone Rock but, having already briefly explored this part of Grange Park and not seen much of great interest, I led us down to Walkworth Wood.
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| A view of Keppel's Column from Walkworth Wood |
The wood sits on the lower slopes beneath an escarpment of the Silkstone Rock, which was exposed at the edge of the field. The area does not appear to have been quarried, but the topsoil has been removed to reveal the bedding plane of flaggy sandstone.
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| An exposure of Silkstone Rock |
The sample that I took, without resorting to my Estwing hammer, is quite yellow in colour, fine to medium grained, well bedded and contains interstitial degraded iron bearing minerals, but no mica. It was the first time that I had seen an outcrop of Silkstone Rock in Rotherham, but it looks quite different to the muddy grey specimen that I collected from the Clay Wood quarry in Sheffield.
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| A specimen of Silkstone Rock (21mm diameter coin) |
Continuing along the path at the foot of the escarpment, we kept our eyes open for signs of quarrying, but this seems to be restricted to Barber Wood, where the unnamed PLCMF sandstone above the Penistone Flags was used to build Thundercliffe Grange.
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| The escarpment of Silkstone Rock in Walkworth Wood |
We made our way north along the path into an area that was formerly part of the site of Grange A Colliery (1855-1962), which was owned by Newton Chambers and Co., one of Britain’s biggest industrial companies. Here, I explored a pile of black shale, with which ironstone is usually associated, but this is probably recent waste from the mine rather than an old bell pit.
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| Black shale waste at the former Grange A Colliery site |
Rummaging around the tip, I didn’t see any signs of ironstone as I had at the line of old bell pits at Kimberworth, but obtained a specimen of a rock that I did not yet have in my collection. Its grains aren’t visible with a hand lens and there is no sign of any fossils or finely disseminated pyrite.
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| A specimen of black shale (21mm diameter coin) |
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