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| Sandstone in a boundary wall |
Following on from my brief exploration of the Silkstone Rock around City Road and Park Hill, in Sheffield, my next day out was to Locke Park, which is set in the Kingstone area of Barnsley to the south of the town centre.
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| Listed buildings in Kingstone and Ouslethwaite |
As usual, I had prepared a list of buildings from the British Listed Buildings website that did not yet have a photograph and, after taking the train from Sheffield to Barnsley, I caught the No. 44 bus to Park Road, where I commenced my walk at the Grade II Listed Church of St. Edward (1902), by Goodwin S Packer of Southport.
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| The Church of St. Edward |
I only had a quick look at the fabric of the church around the south door, where the walling is a planar bedded, light brown medium grained sandstone, which I assume has been quarried from one of the local Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation (PMCMF) sandstones.
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| Planar bedded walling stone |
The dressings are made with a massive medium to coarse grained sandstone, which is quite yellow in places. It lacks the very distinctive cross-bedding of the Woolley Edge Rock, which was the principal sandstone formation quarried for building stone in the Barnsley area, with it most likely coming from West Yorkshire.
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| Details of the south door |
I then headed through Locke Park, which I will describe later, to find the next building on my list, Beech Grove, which was built as a pair of large semi-detached houses in 1873, with an early example of shuttered concrete walls and a flat concrete roof.
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| Beech Grove |
Arriving at Genn Lane, I headed west towards Ouslethwaite, stopping to look at the views across the valley occupied by the River Dove and Worsborough Mill Country Park, where the scarp and vale topography formed in the PMCMF strata can be seen on the skyline.
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| Scarp and vale topography in PMCMF strata |
My first stop in the hamlet of Ouslethwaite was at Genn House (c1700), a sandstone built farmhouse with a stone tile roof where Dr. William Elmhirst, an eminent surgeon and apothecary, lived and ran his practice.
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| Genn House |
The late C18 Ouslethwaite Hall was built for the Elmhirst Estate and is closely associated with Genn House, with the family in the area going back to c1320. The boundary wall is built with a sandstone that is in places light brown, but is sometimes yellowish and cross-bedded.
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| Views of Ouslethwaite Hall |
Ouslethwaite Hall is set back from the road and partially obscured with hedges, with some dirt hiding the colour of the sandstone. On the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, a substantial old quarry in the Kent’s Rock may indicate a possible source, but several quarries did operate on the Woolley Edge Rock further to the east.
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| The large L shaped complex of farm buildings |
Next to Ouslethwaite Hall is a very large L shaped complex of late C18 to early C19 farm buildings, which is built out of a yellowish sandstone similar in colour to that used for the boundary wall to Ouslethwaite Hall, but I could not get near enough to take a good look.
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| Specimens of sandstone from boundary walls |
On my short walk to Ouslethwaite and back to Locke Park, I didn’t see any rock outcrops but, at two places on Genn Lane, the boundary walls had been damaged and I obtained pieces of sandstone - one of which is grey and fine grained and the other is orange and medium grained.
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| A distant view of Locke Park Tower |
When walking along Genn Lane, I could see Locke Park Tower on a ridge of relatively high ground that I thought must be the edge of an escarpment formed by one of the local sandstones but, when looking at the geological map, this topographic feature very surprisingly has no bearing to the strike of the strata here.
Making my way through Locke Park, I found a bus stop on Park Road, where I could not help but notice the wide variety of colours and textures seen in the adjacent boundary wall – with the ironstone rich bands in the sandstone standing out proud.
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| Deatails of a boundary wall on Park Road |
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