Various Building Stones in Hayes

 

Sandstone and flint at St. Mary's church

During my brief visit to London, to help my mother with her convalescence after she had broken her hip, I had undertaken a couple of half day visits that appealed to me as a geologist – particularly the 'dinosaurs', ‘Geological Illustrations’ and deposits of the Claygate Member of the London Clay Formation at Crystal Palace Park and the Harwich Formation at Keston Common.

 

The Triton Stone Library

 

Having worked in the building restoration industry in London and later devising the Triton Stone Library, I was also very interested to encounter several building stones at the Church of St. John the Baptist in West Wickham, some of which I was not very familiar with.

 

The New Inn

 
On my last day, I decided to take a quick look at Hayes which, like many of the suburbs in this part of Greater London, is an old village that has been absorbed by vast interwar housing developments and its character is mostly lost. Arriving on the No. 119 bus from West Wickham, I was immediately attracted to the New Inn, which first appears on the 1909 Ordnance Survey map and was rebuilt after it had received a direct hit with a bomb in WWII. 

 

A detail of walling at the New Inn

The thinly bedded rubble walling masonry, which is orange/brown in colour and contains very high concentrations of iron that would probably classify it as an ironstone. Obtaining a loose piece from the boundary wall from the car park, it contains thin medium grained sandy layers in a body of stone that is finer grained, with both reacting strongly to hydrochloric acid. 

 

Ironstone from the boundary wall to the New Inn

Looking at an old photo of the original building, the two storey southern section seems to have survived and the dressings to the door and windows are made of a honey coloured limestone that is composed mainly of shell fragments. I have only encountered Ham Hill stone from Somerset on a very few occasions, once in central London, but I think that it has been used here. 

 

An intricately carved Ham Hill door surround

The main rebuilt façade, which has very large windows with mullions and transoms, also contains a lot of ironstone and red brick. The dressings are built with a limestone that has a very similar colour to the original window dressings but, although displaying large patches of shelly material, the large ashlar blocks show no sign of bedding structures.

Limestone used for the rebuilt structure

I didn’t spend any time closely examining the stone with my hand lens but, when having a look at the large capping stones to the large gate piers, the limestone is cross-bedded and softer beds within the stone are differentially weathered, which gives it a texture that again suggests that this is Ham Hill stone. 

 

A hamm Hill capping stone to a gate pier

As usual, I had prepared a listed of buildings that required photos on the British Listed Buildings website; however, none of these are built in stone and the next building of interest to this Language of Stone Blog that I encountered was the Grade II Listed Church of St. Mary the Virgin, which is sited in the oldest part of the village. 

 

The tower at St. Mary's church

The lower part of the Tower and the west wall of the Nave with a lancet window date from c.1200 and the mullions of the windows in the south aisle and the vestry from c.1350, but the church was largely rebuilt in the C19 by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1856 and by his son, J Oldrid Scott, in 1879 and the chancel by Sir Thomas Jackson in 1905.

 

A general view of the east end of St. Mary's church

I just had a quick walk around its exterior, noting that it is essentially built in knapped flint with Bath stone dressings, before having a quick look around the churchyard. I took record photos of two Commonwealth War Graves, but I was more interested in a large wall like Portland stone monument, with Christ on the cross and flanked by two angels. 

 

The Hambro family monument

This very unusual and ornate monument, dated 1906, is very surprisingly not mentioned in the Historic England listing description or by Pevsner, but which an internet search suggests relates to several members of the Hambro banking family. 

 

A detail of the Hambro family monument

Continuing anticlockwise around the church and passing the Bath stone porch (1965), I was interested to see that the quoins on the south-west corner of the south aisle are built in a sandstone that has a distinct green/grey patina. 

 

Sandstone quoins on the south aisle

Examining a small piece of stone that I broke off with my fingers using a hand lens, which is quite orange in colour, I can see very many very dark grains of probable glauconite in a fine to medium grained sandstone, but there is no reaction with hydrochloric acid. 

 

A sample of sandstone from a quoin on the south aisle

I finished my brief exploration of Hayes by having a quick look at The Knoll and then walking down Pickhurst Lane, where I came across the ancient Jacob’s Well, where the surrounds are built with what, from my photographs, looks like large blocks of chalk with flints, which is incorporated into an ironstone rubble wall. 

 

Jacob's Well

The ironstone has the same colour and textures as that seen in the boundary wall in the New Inn, but large angular blocks used with the thinly bedded stone are often composed of coarse grained sand. Neither chalk or ironstone make good building stones, with their use being restricted to vernacular architecture near to the quarry sources, but I have no idea of where these were. 

 

Ironstone walling