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| The village sign in Wadworth |
Following on from my day out to Anston, I took advantage of the coffee morning that is held on the last Saturday of the month at the Church of St. John the Baptist at Wadworth in Doncaster, which I had very briefly visited when undertaking surveys for the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment.
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The geology around Wadworth © BGS |
Catching what was then the hourly No. 22 bus from Doncaster, the A60 road crosses the red marl of the Edlington Formation before rising up to Main Street in the old part of the village, which is set on the edge of the Brotherton Formation.
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| Buildings at the junction of Main Street and Walnut Street Hill |
Alighting at the Main Street/Ratten Row stop, I firstly photographed the group of buildings at the junction of Main Street and Walnut Tree Hill, where the front elevations are built with yellowish roughly squared and coursed limestone walling that, as seen from a distance, appear to be built with quite massive blocks.
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| The Main Street elevation |
On the Main Street elevation, however, the lower section of the walling is built with rubble walling where the limestone is very thinly bedded, which is highlighted by differential weathering. In places, the walling is built directly on very large irregular blocks of massive limestone containing well defined cross-laminations, which I think is bedrock.
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| Massive limestone forming foundations of the walling on Main Street |
Where the path slopes away to the north, this is underlain by what is obviously very thinly bedded limestone, which is disintegrating to such an extent that it has been partly rendered and sand and cement has been used to fill in the joints of the larger blocks.
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| Thin bedded limestone foundations and sand and cement rendering |
The sample that I collected has a bed height of 3 cm, is buff coloured and very finely crystalline, with a cellular texture where the pores are lined with a black substance that, in the limestones of the Cadeby Formation, are considered to be a manganese oxide.
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| A sample of limestone from the Brotherton Formation |
Retracing my steps along Main Street, Nos. 1-5 are built out of cream/buff/yellow limestone, which have generally thinner courses than the above buildings. In my previous post, when describing the quarries that I encountered when undertaking the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment, beds of this height do occur in the Brotherton Formation, but they constitute a minor component of the beds seen in the quarry faces.
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| Nos. 1-5 Main Street |
Walking up Old School Lane towards the church, the return wall of No.5 Main Street have obvious lamination that is not usually seen in limestone from the Cadeby Formation, as does the adjacent boundary wall. Looking at the 1901 Ordnance Survey map, where the buildings shown essentially coincide with those now in the Wadworth Conservation Area, three quarries are marked at the edge of the villages, which could have suppied stone for the older buildings in the village.
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| The 1901 Ordnance Survey map |
Further up School Street, Wadworth Village Hall (1840) and the old school house on the opposite side of the road are built using very well squared and coursed cream coloured limestone, which looks typical of the building stone obtained from the Cadeby Formation.
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| Wadworth Village Hall and the old school house |
Arriving at St. John’s church, which I will describe in my next Language of Stone Blog post, I unexpectedly got the opportunity to visit St. Katherine’s church in Loversall, which was open for a Romanian Orthodox church service, and I was therefore unable to explore Carr Lane at the east end of Wadworth – where I wanted to photograph various old farm buildings for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge.
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| Listed buildings in Wadworth |
I instead made my way to Wadworth Hall where, after a local had asked me why I was taking photographs of ‘private’ property, I explained that I was allowed by law to do so from the street and took a few quick snaps of the west and east lodges, the house and the gatepiers.
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| Wadworth Hall and the associated lodges and entrance gatepiers |
Making my way back through St. John’s churchyard to Main Street, I continued down the hill, where I noticed that the boundary wall on the corner of High Street incorporates very large blocks of limestone, before walking along the A60 to Loversall.
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| Large blocks of limestone incorporated into a boundary wall |
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