St. Wilfrid's Church in Hickleton - Part 3

 

St. Wilfrid's church

After having a quick look at the interior of St. Wilfrid’s church and its various monuments, I thanked Father Schaefer for his time and had a brief look at the exterior of this surprisingly large church, which Pevsner describes as essentially Perpendicular Gothic in style. 

 

A view from the north-west

 

When I first passed through the lychgate, after getting off the No. X19 bus, my first impression of the church was that the dolomitic limestone from the Permian Cadeby Formation looked quite yellow, even though the colour is partially obscured by the greyish patina that typically forms on this limestone. 

 

The tower

 

When undertaking some preliminary research before my visit to Hickleton, I discovered that major underpinning work had been carried out during the mid 1980’s, due to severe subsidence that was related to the Hickleton and Goldthorpe collieries, whose pitheads were only a short distance to the east of St. Wilfrid’s church – a situation that was exacerbated by movement along a minor geological fault. 

 

The north elevation

 

I only have access to the abstract of a paper published by G.H. Roscoe in 1988, for the Geological Society Engineering Geology Special Publications, but it states that the church had settled by more than 2 metres and cracks up to 100 mm wide occurred in the fabric; however, when walking around the church, although I saw renewed ashlar blocks in isolated areas that seemed quite normal for a church of this age, I didn’t see anything that suggested that the structure had been so badly affected by subsidence. 

 

A window and surrounding masonry on the north elevation

 

Walking clockwise around the exterior, I noted that the north aisle of the nave seems to be built in limestone that is quite yellow in colour and appears to be less durable than the stone used in other parts of the church, but I did not survey the stonework in any great detail. 

 

A blocked doorway

 

The yellow limestone used for the blocked doorway is in particularly poor condition and the handful of fragments that I collected, which had detached themselves from the main body of the stone had deteriorated to the extent that they easily crumbled into dust. 

 

Limestone collected from the blocked doorway (22 mm diameter coin)

Continuing to the east end of the north elevation, I didn’t much notice of the external wall of the Lady Chapel, which the church guide suggests was rebuilt by G.F. Bodley and which Pevsner had noted was older than the masonry to the south chapel, without assigning a date to it; however, I did note that the masonry west wall of the Victorian vestry had largely been replaced. 

 

Renewed masonry to the vestry

I have seen many other mediaeval churches along the length of the Magnesian Limestone outcrop, from West Yorkshire to Nottinghamshire, with the limestone being generally pale cream in colour, with some yellow variations being apparent where the Cadeby Formation is underlain by the Yellow Sands Formation, which has been reworked during the deposition of the limestone. 

 

Various stone repairs at the east end

 

Various repairs have been undertaken to the vestry, the chancel and the east end of the south chapel, which are all cream coloured limestone. There are now very few sources of dolomitic limestone, with none of them to my knowledge producing yellow stone, which means that a really good match cannot now be obtained for repairs. 

 

A weathered block showing vents and shakes

 

In one or two places, I noticed that the limestone has weathered to reveal vents and shakes, the quarryman’s term for shrinkage cracks associated with the original formation of the dolomite, which underwent a reductionin volume of approximately 13% when it was converted from the limestone - as described by R. J. Schaffer on pp. 12-13 in his classic textbook: The Weathering of Natural Building Stones. 

 

pp. 12-13 of The Weathering of Natural Building Stones

I finished my brief inspection of the masonry at the south aisle, which was partially in the shade of the mature trees but, before I continued with my exploration of Hickleton to take photographs for the British Listed Buildings website, I had a look around the churchyard to see if there was anything of interest.

The south elevation