St. Anne's Church Beeley - The Interior

 

A C12 capital to a replaced colonnette on the south door

After having a quick walk around the exterior of St. Anne’s church in Beeley, I entered the porch and was immediately interested to see a Norman doorway, which is probably the original doorway of the church that the website says was established c.1150. 

 

The south door

 

J. Charles Cox, in Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire Volume II (1877), describes it as considerably mutilated and that the detached shafts to the jambs were missing. These were replaced during the 1882-1884 restoration, using a black stone that I assumed was Ashford Black Marble and didn’t examine closely. 

 

A replaced colonnette on the south door

Entering the church, my first view was of the 3-bay arcade with octagonal piers and capitals and double chamfered arches that, along with the north aisle, was built as part of the major restoration undertaken by H. Cockbain from 1882 to1884. 

 

The arcade

 

A quick walk around the interior revealed that the masonry is completely the product of this restoration, with gritstone ashlar being used for the nave, arcade, north aisle and chancel, with the tower and chancel arches being renewed in the same style as the arcade. 

 

Views of the interior

 

Although there was nothing in the interior to indicate the Norman origins of the church, the  carved label-stops on the tower arch that the listing describes as narrative biblical scenes are very interesting, but there is no mention of these in any of the other information sources that I have referred to when researching this Language of Stone Blog post. 

 

Carved label-stops on the tower arch

Historic England further mentions that the chancel arch is similar, with carvings on the west and east sides, although there is no reference to other angels, musical instruments and other sculptural work that can be found on the arches in the chancel and north aisle. 

 

Carved label-stops

 

In the chancel, I did not go beyond the altar rail to look at the reredos and just took a distant photo in fairly low level light. As with those to the south door, I just assumed that the colonnettes have been made with Ashford Black Marble. 

 

A view of the colonnettes on the reredos

 

I had seen many examples of this in monuments and buildings connected with the Cavendish family and the Chatsworth Estate; however, when enlarging photos of these and a photo of the colonnettes to the pulpit, the textures suggest that they may be made of imported marble, which were by now popular with Victorian architects - something that I will check on my next visit.

 

The colonnettes on the pulpit

 

The floor of the chancel is made with various types of Carboniferous limestone - a grey crinoidal limestone, a pale grey/cream limestone that looks like Hopton Wood stone and another very dark limestone from a lagoonal facies – and another stone with a pinkish colour that looks similar to the one that has been used in the nave of St. Peter’s church in Edensor. 

 

Flooring in the chancel

 

On the south wall of the chancel is a memorial that commemorates John and George Savile, who died in 1733 and 1734 respectively, with the materials being described in the church guide as slate, marble and alabaster. I didn’t get very near to this but, from my photograph, the inscribed panel looks like limestone that has lost its polish due to water flowing down it. 

 

The memorial to John and George Savile

 

Returning to the nave, at its south-east corner is an unusual architectural detail that is described by the church guide as a bracket stone in the shape of a shield and is presumed to be from an earlier building. I can’t recall seeing anything like this in a church but, when rotating my photo at 180 degrees, the pattern looks like a mediaeval arched window with intersecting tracery. 

 

An unusual architectural detail in the nave

 

On the wall of the north aisle, an alabaster and Italian white marble wall monument to Samuel Grafton (d.1887), who was a long-standing senior churchwarden in the parish. His family apparently often appear in accounts of the history of Beeley and he was one of the churchwardens who supervised the restoration of the church. 

 

The memorial to Samuel Grafton

At the time of my visit, the church bell ringers had gathered in the base of the tower and I therefore didn’t have an opportunity to look at this. I had a very quick look at the font, which Cox considered to be Norman but was greatly altered in the C19 and apparently used in the churchyard to store rainwater, before being returned to the church and having a new base fitted in 1975.

 

The font

St. Anne's Church Beeley - The Exterior

 

St. Anne's church

At the end of my walk through Chatsworth Park from Edensor, I quickly continued along the pathless B6210 road to Beeley and stopped only once to photograph the high ground to the south-west at Lees Moor, which is formed by the Ashover Grit. 

 

A view towards Lees Moor

Following the path at the south-west entrance to the churchyard of the Grade II* Listed St. Anne’s church, I was interested to see an ancient yew tree that is surrounded by a circular gritstone wall, with ornamentation using tufa – a geologically recent porous limestone that was used in Victorian landscaped gardens and was extensively quarried along the Via Gellia. 

 

A yew tree in the churchyard

 

Historic England describes the church as being C12 and C13, with a major restoration from 1882-1884 by H. Cockbain of Middleton near Manchester, and Pevsner refers to a Norman south door and a much renewed C13 chancel in a description that only runs to 4 lines in my edition.

 

The porch

 

Starting my exploration of its exterior at the porch, which was added during the 1882-1884 restoration, I was interested to see that the neo-Norman moulded round arched doorway has colonnettes that look like they are made from Red Mansfield stone, a dolomitic sandstone from the Permian Cadeby Formation. 

 

A Red Mansfield stone colonnette on the porch

 

Once the Midland Railway had been established in 1844, this stone became popular with architects in cities such as Leeds and Nottingham and I have encountered it in several buildings in London, when working in the building restoration industry there. 

 

A capital on a colonnette

 

I didn’t look closely at the sandstone used to build the porch but, like the rest of the church and the surrounding village, it will undoubtedly have been been obtained from a quarry located on the nearby Ashover Grit. The stone for the mediaeval church would have been quarried very locally but, by the later C19, it was being extensively quarried for fine ashlar quality stone - especially around Darley Dale and Stanton Moor.

 

The south elevation of the nave

 

Walking anti-clockwise around the exterior, the masonry to the south wall of the nave comprises very well squared and coursed sandstone, which has more noticeable iron staining but without developing into Liesegang rings.

 

A window in the nave

 

The church website refers to various phases of rebuilding of the nave in 1375, in 1819 and again in 1883 with the building of the north aisle, and Historic England mentions that there are two C19 3-light windows with reticulated tracery, hoodmoulds and headstops. 

 

The south elevation of the chancel

 

A very interesting account of the church is by J. Charles Cox in Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire Volume II (1877), which describes the church before the 1882-84 restoration. He describes the chancel as belonging to the C13 Early English period, with a Decorated Gothic priest’s door that he dates to c.1292, a 3-light window with a style that he suggests was prevalent from about 1320 and a square headed Perpendicular Gothic window on its south side. 

 

The south window of the chancel

 

Looking closely, the sharp profiles of the cusped intersecting tracery and window surround and the carved headstops show that the 3-light window has been restored after his observations. Around this window, there are two human heads and one of an animal, which reminds of the sculptures seen in the corbel tables in Adel, Lincoln and Old Edlington. 

 

Reset heads in the chancel wall

 

Cox doesn’t mention these but the church website suggests that they mark the position of a former window, but the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture for Britain and Ireland states that they may very well be fragments from the sizeable Romanesque demolitions at this site. 

 

The east window of the chancel

 

Moving round to the east wall of the chancel, there is another example of a Decorated Gothic window that looks mainly original, looking at the general condition of the window surround and weathered headstops. The bar tracery with quatrefoils, however, look like they have been restored with a reddened sandstone, with their profiles still looking quite sharp. 

 

The east window of the chancel and headstops

 

Continuing to the north elevation, I just noted the C13 lancet window in the north wall of the chancel and took a few photographs of the north aisle from a distance, which was added during the 1882-84 restoration with Decorated Gothic style reticulated tracery, under segmental pointed window heads. 

 

The north elevation

 

At the west end, Cox writes that the lower portion, and perhaps most of the masonry of the tower, is also C13 work, with evidence of this being “clearly shown by the two parallel shallow buttresses, of a single set-off, against the west wall, where there is neither door nor window”, although one of these buttresses has since been removed. 

 

A view of the tower

 

Looking at my photo of the west elevation, to my eye the masonry to the lower stage looks less well coursed and shaped compared to the second stage, especially its upper parts, and the gritstone appears to have a greater iron content. 

 

The west elevation of the tower

 

On each elevation of the upper stage, there is a window with an ogee arch, which is a feature that is generally associated with the C14 century Decorated Gothic style. These look original and suggest that the tower may therefore have both C13 and C14 masonry, with the Perpendicular Gothic castellated parapet added at a later date.

 

An ogee window on the west elevation of the tower

 

A Walk in Chatsworth Park

 

A weir on the River Derwent

Leaving Park House, the last building on my list for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for the model village of Edensor, I set off along the B6012 road towards Beeley, which I had previously followed as far as the road to Calton Lees, during a walk from Edensor to Rowsley in March 2020. 

 

The Ordnance Survey map of Chatsworth Park

 

On that occasion, I had taken this road and not one of the paths through Chatsworth Park, because of the heavy rain and recent flooding alongside the River Derwent. The road has no path and is surrounded by open parkland, with not that much to see, but I wanted to save the scenic route by the river for my leisurely return journey from Beeley. 

 

Fallow deer in Chatsworth Park

 

Keeping my eyes on the traffic while walking quickly on this surprisingly busy road, I stopped just a few times to photograph the fallow deer, Chatsworth House with the escarpment of the Chatsworth Grit rising above it and the tower and steeple of St. Peter’s church. 

 

A view of St. Peter's church

 

Starting at Park House, maps of the topography and geology show that I had started on the mudstone/siltstone of the Marsden Formation at an elevation of 122 m above sea level and then rose to a maximum elevation of 157 m, when crossing the Ashover Grit. 

 

The geology around Chatsworth Park

 

A highlight of my previous walk along this road was the discovery of a fast flowing spring, at the junction of the Ashover Grit and Marsden Formation, which has cut a small but very distinctive valley that is indicated on the geological map by the deposit of Quaternary head. 

 

A small valley formed at a spring

 

I took a quick diversion to see how it was flowing in the middle of August 2023, compared to the aftermath of the storms of 2020, before continuing down the hill to the Grade II Listed mid C19 water trough, which marks the emergence of another spring. 

 

A water trough

 

Continuing down past the bend in the road towards Beeley, the late C18 Bridge House includes a one storied gatekeeper’s lodge. It is built with the local Ashover Grit with stone slate roofs and, like the water trough, is Grade II Listed for its group value. 

 

Bridge House

 

One Arch Bridge (1760), by James Paine, was not on my list but it forms the southern end of Chatsworth Park and I took a photo of it and went to find Beeley Lodge (c.1840), before continuing down the B6102 to Beeley, which I shall describe in future posts.

 

One Arch Bridge

 

Built in a Tudor style, it is thought by Historic England to have been originally designed by Jeffry Wyatville, who was responsible for the north wing and other additions to Chatsworth House and its estate, but was actually completed under the supervision of Joseph Paxton. 

 

Beeley Lodge

 

On the return journey from Beeley, after crossing One Arch Bridge, I took the path along the west bank of the River Derwent, where Edensor Mill (1762), also by James Paine, lies as a ruin on the alluvium at the edge of the flood plain. 

 

Edensor Mill

 

Continuing past the mill alongside the leat, which joins up with the spring described above, the Derbyshire Historic Environment Record explains that the leat continues underground to the point where it joins the weir on the River Derwent. 

 

The leat at Edensor Mill

 

I had never walked along the river to Three Arch Bridge before, a part of Chatsworth Park that was also enjoyed by very many other visitors on a sunny Saturday afternoon in August, so I was very surprised to see the weir. 

 

The weir built to serve Edensor Mill

 

After taking a very late lunch, after what had already been quite a long walk, I continued along the path for a short distance past another weir, before stopping to look at an exposure of weathered mudstone/siltstone of the Marsden Formation, which lies above the alluvial terrace and contains numerous small burrows. 

 

Weathered mudstone and siltstone of the Marsden Formation

 

Although I had visited Chatsworth Park several times over the years, I stopped a few times to photograph Chatsworth House from various angles and in different lighting conditions - waiting until the sun came out from behind the clouds. 

 

A view of Chatsworth House

 

Continuing along the path to Paine’s Grade I Listed Three Arch Bridge (1759-74), I crossed the river and, having had a good long walk, finally arrived at Chatsworth House car park, where I caught the No. 218 bus back to Sheffield.

 

Three Arch Bridge

 

Historic Architecture in Edensor

 

St. Peter's church

My excursion to Coal Aston and Dronfield, in August 2023, was very productive - with 300 photographs recording their geology, listed buildings and industrial history during a 7 km walk that took 3½ hours from start to finish. 

 

The Stagecoach No. 160 bus timetable

For my next day out, I decided to go and have a look at the Grade II* Listed St. Annes’ church in Beeley, which is part of the Chatsworth Estate in the Peak District National Park. Studying various timetables, if the buses ran on time, I could catch the X54 from Treeton to Sheffield, the No. 218 to Chatsworth House and finally the No. 160 to Beeley - arriving at 10:11. 

 

The Photo Challenge for Edensor, Beeley and Chatsworth Park

 

As usual, I had prepared a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Edensor, Chatsworth Park and Beeley and, when the TM Travel No. 218 bus - who also ran the equally unreliable X54 service - didn’t turn up on time, I alighted at the Gates bus stop and started out on what eventually turned into a 6 mile walk. 

 

The Park Ranger's House

 

During a previous visit to Edensor in September 2018, I had photographed most of the buildings in the model village built by Joseph Paxton for the 6th Duke of Devonshire, which I added to the British Listed Buildings website at a later date; however, some of the peripheral buildings had not been photographed and the first building on my list was the late C18 Park Ranger’s House, which I could only see from the main road. 

Dunsa House

Crossing over the road to take a distant photo of Dunsa House (c.1848), by Paxton in an Italianate style, I could only get a glimpse of No. 3 Teapot Row (1912), which is part of a row of two detached and a pair of semi-detached cottages that Historic England describe as being in the C17 vernacular style and possibly by W.H. Romaine-Walker, who was responsible for the building of the main staircase at Chatsworth House. 

 

No. 3 Teapot Row

 

I stopped briefly to photograph the Grade II Listed gates, wall and railings at the north entrance to Edensor and Castle Lodge (1842), which was designed by John Robertson – an architect who was employed in Paxton’s planning office and who made a significant contribution to very many of the houses at Edensor. 

 

Castle Lodge

 

On The Green, there is a large plaque with the words Edensor School formed in raised lettering, which marks the site of the now demolished school that was originally built in the mid C18, rebuilt in the 1840’s and demolished in 1950. 

 

The plaque from Edensor School

 

Continuing to Jap Lane, I firstly photographed the K6 telephone kiosk and then the late C18 Old Vicarage - remodelled in 1838 - of which I could only obtain a partial view from a distance while it was having work undertaken to the roof and chimney stack.

 

The Old Vicarage

 

Although I had taken a good look at the Grade I Listed St. Peter’s church back in 2018 and again in 2020, when preparing a talk on the “Devonshire Marbles” for the 150th anniversary of its consecration – which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic - I couldn’t resist taking another quick look around it.

 

A view along the nave in St. Peter's church

 

Having taken another set of photos of the interior and churchyard, I retraced my steps back to the B6102 and the early C19 Park House, the only building remaining from the original village of Edensor, before setting off to Beeley through Chatsworth Park.

 

Park House