Listed Buildings in Dewsbury - Part 1

 

The Wakefield Road entrance to Dewsbury Town Hall

At the beginning of my day out to Dewsbury, to look at the stonework in its historic architecture and to provide photographs for the British Listed Buildings website, my visit to Dewsbury Minster got me off to a good start - with at least two types of sandstone used in its external fabric and mediaeval arcades and with a good collection of Anglo-Saxon sculpture in the Heritage Centre. 

 

Listed buildings in Dewsbury town centre

 

Having spent longer than expected at Dewsbury Minster, mainly because of the excellent Threads of Survival exhibition, I set off on my exploration of Dewsbury town centre, which is mostly included in the Dewsbury Conservation Area, with the first of 25 buildings on my Photo Challenge – the Grade II Listed Dewsbury Baptist Church (1871). 

 

Dewsbury Baptist Church

 

The church is built in a Gothic Revival style, with pitch-faced planar bedded sandstone used for the walling and massive yellowish sandstone used for the quoins and dressings, where the different physical characteristics of these stones are very obvious at the east door of the church – where pink Peterhead granite from Aberdeenshire in Scotland is also used for the columns. 

 

The east door of Dewsbury Baptist Church

As I discovered when undertaking surveys of the Sheffield Board Schools and photographing very many other listed buildings in their vicinity, it is not easy to identify the local Upper Carboniferous sandstones used to build them. Also, the medium grained Derbyshire sandstones from the Millstone Grit Group are not easily distinguished from those that were later brought down from West Yorkshire, once a railway connection had been established with Sheffield

 

Reference books used to devise the Triton Stone Library

When devising the Triton Stone Library in 1996, the main sources of stone suppliers that I used, the Natural Stone Directory and the Building Research Establishment digest – The building sandstones of the British Isles – showed that by far the largest concentration of active sandstone quarries was to be found in West Yorkshire. 

 

The Triton Stone Library

 

Of the 43 Carboniferous sandstones in the library, which includes those from Derbyshire, Northumberland, Durham and Gloucestershire, 18 are from West Yorkshire. With the establishment of several railway companies to transport coal to the textile mills and to distribute the finished products to the rest of Britain and overseas, a wide range of sandstones became widely available to build the rapidly expanding industrial towns. 

 

The railway network around West Yorkshire

Moving to Dewsbury Town Hall (1889), by the architects Henry Holtom and George Arthur Fox of Dewsbury, the Historic England listing describes it as being built using sandstone ashlar from Holmfirth, although I have seen an account on the history of Dewsbury that suggests that local stone was actually used. 

 

The Wakefield Old Road elevation of Dewsbury Town Hall

 

Fox was also responsible for Morley Town Hall (1892-95), which is built with sandstone ashlar from the Thornhill Rock and, according to "The building sandstones of the British Isles", was quarried from very near to the current Britannia Quarry.

 

Dewsbury Town Hall

 

I have never been to Holmfirth or Morley and the only time that I have seen these sandstones from the Huddersfield White Rock and the Thornhill Rock, was when I obtained six inch square samples for the Triton Stone Library - from the Hillhouse Edge Quarry and Britannia Quarry respectively. 

 

A selection of West Yorkshire sandstones

As Plate 14 in "The building sandstones of the British Isles" digest shows, the colour and grain size of the West Yorkshire sandstones can be quite similar and it wouldn’t surprise me to see all these colour tones in a single large building; however, looking at the general record photos that I took of Dewsbury Town Hall, the sandstone seems to be quite uniform in colour.

 

The main door surround at Dewsbury Town Hall

I didn’t look closely at the masonry with my hand lens, but the medium grained sandstone, with a very even texture, is still in a very good condition and its finely tooled details - on the vermiculated rustication and the sculpted surround to the main door - are still very sharp. 

 

Vermiculated rustication on Dewsbury Town Hall

Before setting off to find my way to the next building on my list, at Nos. 18 and 20 Corporation Street, I had a quick look at The Good Samaritan sculpture in the square in front of the town hall, by Ian Judd, which I assume to be made from a local sandstone.

 

The Good Samaritan by Ian Judd