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| A plaque at the entrance to Nostell Priory |
On the second weekend of the 2022 Heritage Open Days festival, having visited St. John’s church in Ault Hucknall the previous weekend and St. Lawrence's church in Eyam during the week, my next day out was to Nostell Priory – a National Trust property where the usual £10 entrance charge to the house and grounds was waived for the day.
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| Treeton to Nostell Priory as the crow flies |
Although a car journey would take approximately 40 minutes to cover a distance of 30 km as the crow flies, I had been accustomed by now to undertaking my days out using two buses and a train each way. Leaving Treeton at 08:19, I expected to arrive at Nostell Priory at 10:55 after waiting 30 minutes for the No. 485 bus from Kirkgate (stop K5), which is less than a 2 minute walk from Wakefield Kirkgate railway station.
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| Listed buildings in and around the Nostell Estate |
I only had to wait a few minutes before a No. 496 bus arrived, which I hadn’t considered catching because it doesn’t go to Wragby, where I had originally planned to start my walk. Alighting at the village of Foulby, I immediately set about photographing the first few of the 30 buildings that I wanted to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website – Foulby Cottage and Ash Cottage, Japonica House and Foulby Lodge.
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| The brick built listed buildings in Foulby |
This row of Grade II Listed houses, which are dated respectively as early C18, later C18 and probably early C19, are all built in handmade red/brown bricks, which is the first time that I can recall seeing such bricks used for houses in a region that is underlain by Coal Measures strata.
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| A detail of the boundary wall to the Nostell Estate |
Heading off along the Doncaster Road, I immediately encountered the brick boundary wall of the Nostell Estate, which I followed until I reached Nostell Bridge. At this point, I took a diversion down to the edge of the Upper Lake to take a few photos of its south elevation.
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| A view of Nostell Bridge |
Returning to Doncaster Road, the boundary wall beyond the south-eastern part of the bridge had been damaged by a car, with the resultant traffic lights causing considerable delays to the traffic on this very busy road. The wall then continues to Wragby Lodge and, with it being over 2½ metres high and 850 metres long, there must have been a substantial source of workable clay in the area – either as a buried seam or as weathered mudstone on the surface.
Although I knew nothing of this at the time of my visit, a large clay pit has been worked since a brickworks was opened in 1875 at Nostell Colliery, which was located 500 metres to the south-east of Nostell Priory and now forms part of Ibstock Brick Nostell. This exposed the Shafton Marine Band, with black shale resting on a thin coal with a fireclay seatearth beneath it and 20-30 feet of soft shaly mudstone above the marine band.
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| The Old Brewhouse |
Passing the entrance to the former Home Farm, which is now the Nostell Estate Business Park, I could just glimpse the Old Brewhouse, which is probably late C17 in date and is built with sandstone walling and a stone slate roof. On the opposite side of the entrance is the Lodge to Nostell Priory Estate Yard (c.1845), built in similar materials and forming part of the estate yard to Nostell Priory laid out for Charles W Winn (1795-1874).
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| The lodge to the estate yard |
I didn’t look closely at the sandstone exposed in the end wall of the lodge but, continuing down to Wragby Lodge, which the Historic England description states is probably the work of Robert Adam and dated to 1777, I could see that the sandstone was a pale muddy brown/grey colour, with both cross-bedding and plane bedding and differential weathering of the softer beds.
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| The west lodge at Wragby Lodge |
Continuing along Doncaster Road towards Wragby, I stopped a few times to photograph the boundary walls, where I was reminded of the colours and textures that I had seen in the Ackworth Rock, when preparing a report on the stonework at All Saints church in Pontefract back in 1999.
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| The boundary wall to the east of Wragby Lodge |
As part of my work on this project, I visited Wakefield and other places to survey buildings where Ackworth Rock is known to have been used and Stephen Parker, the owner of the last of many quarries in Brackenhill and Ackworth Moor Top, collected me from Pontefract and proudly showed me around his quarry.
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| A detail of the boundary wall |
When I asked for a sample of the Ackworth Rock, to add to my extensive collection of building stones that the Triton Stone Library had been based on, he gave me a small moulded section that has since been used as a bookend for my various cookery books.
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| Ackworth Rock in different lighting conditions |
Looking at the Building Stones of England map explorer, it can be seen that there were several quarries less than 3 km away, which all worked the Ackworth Rock although, according to the geological memoir (1940), this sandstone could be of variable quality.
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| A screenshot from the Building Stones of England map explorer |
Arriving in Wragby, I took a few photographs of the late C18 The Forge Cottage and Rafters, a pair of cottages built with brown handmade bricks with stone slate roofs and then the stone built Old Forge, which is of a similar age and is built with Ackworth Rock.
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| The Old Forge |
I then continued along Doncaster Road until I reached the end of the village, at the Spread Eagle public house, photographing the various buildings along the way, which are mainly built out of similar sandstone but include a terrace of houses that are also built with brown bricks.
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| Vernacular architecture in Wragby |
Retracing my steps, I stopped very briefly to photograph the sandstone war memorial, in the form of a Latin cross with a sword of sacrifice in relief on the front face, before heading off to the Church of St Michael and Our Lady.
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| Wragby war memorial |
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