A Day Out to Eckington - Part 4

 

Camms House on Church Street

The last task on my day out to Eckington, in the last week of May 2022, was to photograph the remaining 7 buildings on my list for the British Listed Buildings website, starting at Market Street in the centre of Eckington. 

 

Historic buildings on Market Street

After taking a few photos of some of the older unlisted buildings along this street, which are all built with sandstone that has a high iron content and marked colour variation, I turned my attention to Nos. 24-28, where the mainly rendered stonework encloses a timber frame building that dates back to c.1500. 

 

Nos. 24-28 Market Street

A little further along the road, Nos. 13-19 comprise an early C19 terrace of four substantial 3-storey terraced houses, built with well squared and coursed iron stained sandstone that has a batted finish, which collects the dirt and slightly obscures the colour of the stone.

 

Nos. 13-19 Market Street

Moving on to Church Street, the early C19 house at No. 74 is set back from the road and partially obscured by vegetation in the front garden, but the general colour of the slightly blackened square and coursed masonry is consistent with the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation sandstone seen in all of Eckington’s listed buildings on my walk to date. 

 

No. 74 Church Street

A similar sandstone is used for The Hollies, which the Historic England listing describes as “House, formerly two cottages. C18 and C19.” The older building has thinly bedded walling, massive sandstone for the very large quoins and door surround and stone slates for the eaves, whereas the later building is constructed with squared and coursed batted sandstone without quoins and a Welsh slate roof.

 

The Hollies on Church Street

At No. 11 Church Street, formerly the Prince of Wales Hotel, a new extension has been built in a sandstone that matches the stone used for the existing buildings extremely well, except for the quoins. As a geologist, with specialist interests in stone matching, I am not aware of any quarries in Derbyshire that produce stone with these physical characteristics and I therefore suspect that this may have used reclaimed stone from a local building.

 

The extension to the former Prince of Wales Hotel

 

Continuing down Church Street, Malthouse Farmhouse (c1700) and the adjacent late C16 barn provide further examples of a locally quarried multi-coloured iron rich sandstone but, as with the other listed buildings that I had seen, I don’t know the provenance. 

 

Malthouse Farmhouse

 

I took a diversion into the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul to photograph No. 28, a converted barn that dates back to at least the early C16, with C17 alterations, which was scaffolded and being re-roofed at the time. Although I could only see the gable end, the pattern of stonework presented nothing new, as with the several sandstone buildings of varying ages and architectural styles that I saw when walking to the bus stop on Sheffield Road.

 

Various buildings on Church Street