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| Rawmarsh war memorial |
Continuing my brief exploration of Rawmarsh, the Grade I Listed St. Mary’s church (1839), by J.P. Pritchett, is largely built in the early English English Gothic style and forms a very prominent landmark, which is set on high ground at the eastern end of a ridge formed by the Kent’s Rock.
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| St. Mary's church |
The main feature that I wanted to see is what Historic England describe as the remains of a heavily restored Norman door, which was incorporated into the rebuilt tower (1869). I have seen many churches that have elaborately carved Romanesque door surrounds, but the only time that I have seen sandstone used for these is at St. Margaret’s churchyard in Swinton.
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| The south door |
Standing back to take a couple of photographs, I couldn’t see anything that I thought looked like ancient masonry but, when I got very close to look its details, I could see very weathered cushion capitals and unrestored colonnettes that look original.
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| Reused Norman cushion capitals on the south door |
Much of the masonry is moderately dirty and it is not easy to see its physical characteristics but, quickly walking around its exterior, I did note that more than one variety of Coal Measures sandstone, of unknown provenance, have been used in its construction – with one of these having proved not to be very durable.
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| Restored masonry with matching tool marks |
At low level, the masonry has been replaced in a few places and I was very interested to see that recent restoration work has reproduced the original tooled finish, which has long since been eroded away on much of the original masonry.
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| Fossil plants |
Making my way back down to High Street, I continued down the hill and stopped briefly to photograph a block of sandstone in the retaining wall, which contained a couple of large fragments of fossil plants, before arriving at Rawmarsh war memorial.
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| Rawmarsh war memorial |
The cenotaph (1928), designed by Charles Hutton while still a student at the University of Liverpool, is built out of a massive medium grained sandstone that could be one of the sandstones from the Millstone Grit Group of Derbyshire or West Yorkshire or even Bolton Woods sandstone, which has been used for the cenotaph in Clifton Park.
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| Inscriptions on the cenotaph |
On the cenotaph, the inscriptions are cut into a stone that I didn’t look at closely at the time and which I can’t readily identify from my photographs, but Cumbrian green slate from the Borrowdale Volcanic Group has been used for the wall plaques, which commemorate the casualties of WWII, active service in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan and acts of terrorism.
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| Plaques commemorating casualties of WWII |
Quite unusually, the memorial incorporates a trough in the wall behind the cenotaph, with a bronze lion’s head that is presumably the water spout, which has been placed there as a tribute to the part played by horses in the 1914-1918 war. The scale, design and planting make this one of the most impressive war memorials that I have seen in northern England, which makes the fact that is not listed even more surprising.
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| The water trough |
One particularly interesting detail is the extract from the war poem For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon - At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them. This has been inscribed in the sandstone surround of a poppy that is made of Permo-Triassic red sandstone, which has has lost its brightness, with a centre of ‘black granite’.
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| The poppy with an extract from For the Fallen |
The last listed building that I wanted to photograph was the old National Coal Board pumping house (1823) on Westfield Road, which was part of the infrastructure relating to the extensive coal mining activities on the land owned by Charles Wentworth-Fitzwilliam.
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| The pumping station |
Having finished my task of photographing the handful of listed buildings in Rawmarsh, Rawmarsh, I followed the footpath to Terrace Road and, before reaching the main A633 road that would take me down to Parkgate, I stopped at the top of Ashwood Road to photograph the view of the escarpment of the Rotherham Red variety of the Mexborough Rock, which is formed on the southern extremity of the Don Monocline.
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| The view from the top of Ashwood Road |
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