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| Part of the Clark's Stones on Penny Piece Lane |
The recce of Anston Stones Wood for the June 2023 Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip, which I had undertaken with a relatively new member Carol, had taken nearly 2½ hours but it fitted in with my timing to have lunch at the Anston Parish Council car park, where we had started our walk.
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| The 1892 Ordnance Survey map showing quarries in North Anston |
For the second leg of our field trip, my plan was to explore the site of the old quarries in North Anston where the Anston Quarry, owned by the Duke of Leeds, supplied most of the dolomitic limestone from the Permian Cadeby Formation that was used to rebuild the Palace of Westminster after the Great Fire of 1834.
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| A satellite view of the redeveloped old quarries and lime kilns |
Most of the area occupied by the quarries and lime kilns has now been redeveloped for housing, with street names such as Quarry Lane and Limekilns giving clues to its industrial history. On one of my previous visits to North Anston, I had discovered that some of the faces of the Greenland Quarry can still be seen and a quarry face forms the boundary of the gardens along Limekilns.
The LiDAR map of the area shows several areas within the new housing estate where there are well defined vertical features, which probably also form exposures of rock in more back gardens but I hadn’t yet seen any on my visits to North Anston.
Setting off from the car park after having our lunch, our walk up Ryton Road to Main Street and along to Hillside entailed a distance of less than 600 metres and an ascent of only 16 metres, but we passed from the mudstones of the Pennine Upper Coal Measures Formation (MUCMF) to the Cadeby Formation across the Carboniferous-Permian unconformity.
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| Small outcrops of reef limestone forming the base of a boundary wall |
Noting the small outcrops of reef limestone that form the foundation of the boundary wall to No. 9 Hillside, we headed north through The Green past a few Grade II Listed buildings in the North Anston Conservation Area to Quarry Lane, before continuing to Greenlands Park, to look at the thinly bedded dolomitic limestone exposed in an old quarry face.
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| Thinly bedded limestone in Greenlands Park |
The remaining quarry face of the Greenland Quarry, which I had noted on my previous visit, was quite overgrown and not easily accessible for a close inspection and we continued our recce by following the footpath down to Limekilns and the snicket to Penny Piece Lane.
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| The overgrown face of the Greenlands Quarry |
After sharing a Language of Stone Blog post on Facebook, which briefly described the geology of the area, I was informed that outcrops of reef limestone can be seen on Penny Piece Place, which I later learned are marked as Clark’s Stones on the old Ordnance Survey maps.
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| Reef limestone at Clark's Stones |
While Carol and I were examining the reef from the footpath, the owner of the house came out and, after I had explained what we were doing, he invited us into his back garden where there is an even bigger mass of rock, which is as good an example of a bryozoan reef as those seen at the Wood Lee Common SSSI in Maltby.
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| Another example of reef limestone at Clark's Stones |
The reef was densely covered in vegetation, which has been partly cleared and we were told that this spectacular ‘rockery’ was one of the reasons for buying the house and it now forms the centrepiece of an immaculately kept garden.
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| Another overgrown exposure of reef limestone at Clark's Stones |
After being let out of the back gate onto Quarry Lane, I noticed another outcrop to the rear of the adjoining house and a house on its upper north side also has a large exposure of limestone in its garden, but I don’t know if this is another part of Clark’s Stones or it is a quarry face.
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| An exposure of limestone on Quarry Lane |
Making our way along Quarry Lane, I was interested to see that one boundary wall was unusually made of gabions, which are welded cages filled with rocks that are typically used to provide stability to road cuttings and other civil engineering projects.
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| Gabions used for a boundary wall on Quarry Lane |
Continuing back to The Green and Hillside and walking down the escarpment to Main Street, our final stop was at The Wells. A spring, which was at the heart of the earliest settlement at Anston, emerges from the junction of the Cadeby Formation and the underlying impermeable rocks of the PUCMF, before flowing down to meet Anston Brook.
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| The limestone escarpment at Main Street |
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