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| A view up Edge Lane in Birley Edge |
Leaving the escarpment of Greenmoor Rock, my first stop in the hamlet of Birley Edge was the Grade II Listed Birley Hall Farmhouse, built between 1797 and 1827, which was the first of six buildings that I wanted to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website.
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| Views of Birley Hall Farmhouse |
I could only get a look at the roadside elevations, but it is built in yellow cross-bedded Grenoside Sandstone that contains a significant amount of rusty brown blocks, which was presumably obtained from the Fox Hill quarries that were worked a few hundred metres to the east.
Looking closely with the naked eye at the dressings, I noticed that the Grenoside Sandstone used for these is medium/coarse grained and much more massive than the walling, but I didn’t spend any time closely examining the stonework.
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| A dressing made with medium/coarse grained Grenoside Sandstone |
On the opposite side of the road is Birley Old Hall (1705), which incorporates an earlier cruck frame building, but only parts of it can be clearly seen from the road and I could only get glimpses of the house, which is quite simple in style and has mullioned windows.
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| Views of Birley Old Hall |
Tucked away in the corner of the large garden at Birley Old Hall is the Falconry (c1705), a garden pavilion built in Grenoside Sandstone, with a stone tile roof, which was restored along with the main house in 1959, by D. Doncaster.
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| The Falconry |
A few metres north of Birley Hall Farmhouse is the old Coach House, which was built at the same time and is one of a matching pair. It is set back from Edge Lane along a private drive and again I could only view it from a distance, but I could see that Grenoside Sandstone has been used here.
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| The Coach House |
I then took a quick look at the late C18 red brick built Birley House, which has very large and elongated rusticated quoins that are presumably made of local sandstone, with window and door surrounds, the band course and the parapet to the front elevation made of the same stone.
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| Birley House |
The sandstone gate piers are also Grade II listed structures and, after taking a couple of quick snaps of these, I continued down Edge Lane to see if there were any other interesting historic architecture or details that appeal to me as a geologist.
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| The main entrance to Birley House |
I went as far as the main entrance to Birley House, where Grenoside Sandstone walling flanks the gate piers. Looking closely, a few of the blocks are seen to contain contorted beds, which probably occurred before the sediment had become consolidated - a phenomenon that has been interpreted at the nearby Wharncliife Crags as a record of a seismic event.
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| Contorted Grenoside Sandstone at the entrance to Birley House |
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