The Escarpment at Bolsterstone

 

A view from the escarpment at Bolsterstone

On my first visit to Bolsterstone, I had a quick wander around the village to photograph its listed buildings, including the Porter’s Lodge and Castle Cottage - considered to contain vestiges of Bolsterstone Castle, a late mediaeval manor house that may have been fortified, but of which there is scant documentary or physical evidence. 

 

An Ordnance Survey map showing the public footpaths

 

I followed this up with another visit to St. Mary’s churchyard, to prepare for a future talk on the geology of the headstones for the Bolsterstone Graveyard Project. This took just over an hour and, after taking advantage of the homemade soup and refreshments served during the Wednesday coffee morning at St. Mary’s church, Catherine wanted to take a short walk along the footpath that runs east along the escarpment of Rough Rock that overlooks the Ewden Valley. 

 

The geological map showing the outcrop of the Rough Rock

 

Crossing over the stile at the west end of the public footpath at Heads Lane, she pointed out a section of a dry stone wall, which forms the southern boundary of the field where Bolsterstone Castle is believed to have been located.

 

A Google Map view of Bolsterstone

 

Stopping to have a quick look at this, without examining the various stones with my hand lens, I could immediately see that it didn’t look like a typical dry stone wall, which is built with two outer skins, a rubble core and with through stones to make it structurally stable. 

 

A view of the boundary wall

 

Dry stone walling is a fine art, with great care being taken to ensure that each stone carefully fits alongside its neighbours, but this wall is composed of a single skin that is full of gaps that I could see right through. The very large blocks look like they have been roughly squared to be originally used as a walling stone for a building, not a boundary wall, and Catherine suggested that perhaps these had been recycled from Bolsterstone Castle, which seemed reasonable to me. 

 

Another view of the boundary wall

 

Continuing along the path, the pattern of walling stone changes from large massive blocks to much smaller and thinner stones, which is commonly seen in many parts of South Yorkshire that are underlain by finer grained flaggy sandstones such as the Greenmoor Rock and Penistone Flags. 

 

Flaggy sandstone used in the boundary wall

 

When looking at St. Mary's church, I quickly noticed that it is built out of a very coarse sandstone that, largely based on the references to Allman Well Hill quarries in the British Geological Survey memoir, I thought was very likely to be Loxley Edge Rock. Although I didn’t stop to closely examine any of the boundary walls and the houses in Bolsterstone, I could see that the sandstone used for these is massive and coarse grained. 

 

Another view of flaggy sandstone in the boundary wall

 

My experience of the Rough Rock further to the south, around Whirlow, is that it is much finer grained and flaggy, not massive and gritty, with it being widely used for paving and stone slates. Continuing further east along the footpath, the boundary wall is predominantly built out of flaggy sandstone and eventually we came to a wooded area downslope of the escarpment, which Catherine informed me was the site of a few old quarries, one of which was still marked as working on the 1:25,000 scale 1893 Ordnance Survey map. 

 

Bolsterstone on the 1:25,000 scale 1893 Ordnance Survey map

I followed the adjoining boundary wall down the slope and, although I could get glimpses of sandstone exposures, I didn’t see any obvious way to get easy access and, not having my Estwing hammer with me and with rain threatening, we decided not to investigate this further. 

 

The site of an old quarry on the Rough Rock escarpment

 

Although bus services to Bolsterstone no longer operate and those to Stocksbridge are infrequent, which hinder my efforts to get to the area, Catherine informed me that there were various quarries and other points of interest in the area and we could investigate these later in the year. 

 

A panoramic view of the Ewden Valley