The Burton Bank Quarry in Barnsley

 

A view north along the old Burton Bank quarry face

For my last trip in May 2022, following my day out to Eckington, I went to have a look at the Woolley Edge Rock at the old Burton Bank quarry in Barnsley, a RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Site)/LGS (Local Geological Site) that had been identified and designated by the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT).

 

The SAGT walk around Burton Bank quarry

I had seen exposures of the Woolley Edge Rock at the Lewden and Worsbrough Dale quarries back in 1996, when undertaking the original surveys or the South Yorkshire RIGS Group, as well as in the A61 road cutting, during my exploration of Worsbrough Bridge, but I didn’t have a close look at the rock or collect a sample. 

 

The outcrop of the Woolley Edge Rock in Barnsley

Although I have not seen any documentation to confirm its use in a particular historic building, except for restoration, I think that I have seen it used as a walling stone at the Chantry Chapel of St. Mary, Wakefield Cathedral, St. Helen’s church in Sandal Magna and also for the barbican at Sandal Castle. The strongly cross-bedded sandstone has graded laminae, which differential weathering picks out to give the stone a distinctive striped appearance. 

 

The northern approach to Burton Bank quarry

 

Taking the No. 1 bus from Barnsley Interchange, I alighted at the Wakefield Road/Burton Road stop and headed up Wakefield Road until I reached Quarry Street, at the end of which is the northern entrance to the landscaped quarry, which now serves as a recreation space. 

 

Massive sandstone with overlying flaggy beds

I followed the main footpath southwards and, before long, I encountered my first rock exposure, where massive sandstone is succeeded by increasingly flaggy sandstone, indicating a change in the flow regime, which passes upwards into subsoil. 

 

An accessible quarry face

A little further along the old quarry face, I stopped to look at the general characteristics of the sandstone from a distance, from where I could discern very large scale 'wedge bedding' - an old fashioned but accurate description of large scale cross-bedding, which can be found in the older British Geological Survey memoirs, but which a search on Google shows is now rarely used. 

 

Cross-bedding and differentially weathered laminae

Moving close to the quarry face at the first point that I was able to avoid the nettles and other thick vegetation, I could clearly see the cross-bedding, with graded and differentially weathered laminae and a high iron content, particularly dense concentrations on the joint planes. 

 

Large scale cross-bedding with differentially weathered laminae

According to the 1947 memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain refers to numerous old quarries along the northern side of the Dearne valley from Staincross to Hoyle Mill, with the largest yielding a great number of fossil plant stems, which “spoil the stone but are not sufficiently well preserved to be of interest.” 

 

Samples of Woolley Edge Rock with plant remains

 

When discretely obtaining a couple of samples from an artificial cleft in the quarry face, I noticed these and streaks of coal in various loose blocks. The samples are medium grained, with a minority of coarse grains and sometimes almost entirely composed of quartz, but an irregular distribution of weathered iron bearing minerals in the interstices provide yellow/orange colouration. 

 

Massive sandstone overlain by flaggy beds

Continuing along the path, I came across further large sections of the old quarry face, which were inaccessible due to the nettles; however, even from a distance and viewing photos taken with a zoom lens, the same bedding structures, pattern of weathering and moderately high iron content can easily be seen. 

 

Massive sandstone with large scale cross-bedding

 

Leaving the quarry at the south entrance, I took a couple of photos of the rock-faced sandstone used to build the Edwardian terraced houses on Burton Bank Road and the earlier Dearne Terrace on Burton Road, dated 1903, which I would have thought would have been probably built with the locally quarried stone. 

 

Edwardian terraced houses on Burton Bank Road

 

Based on the amount of iron staining that I had seen along the joints and the general yellow/orange colour variation in the exposed body of the stone and my samples, I was surprised to see that the stone was quite uniformly light brown. Some houses had been cleaned, revealing a texture that was not obviously cross-bedded and differentially weathered, which I have asociated with the Woolley Edge Rock.

 

Edwardian terraced houses on Burton Bank Road

 

The Historic England Building Stone Database for England map shows three quarries marked approximately 1.5 km to the south-east, which worked the Oaks Rock. I don’t know the sandstone formations or the building stones of Barnsley that well, but I decided to go and explore the Old Town Conservation Area, which is dominated by the Portland stone Barnsley Town Hall.

 

Barnsley Town Hall