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| An old quarry on Mill Lane |
My very quick exploration of Coal Aston - primarily to complete a Photo Challenge that comprised 6 listed buildings - ended at the beginning of Green Lane, where the scarp slope of the Silkstone Rock turns into a dip slope on the northern limb of the Dronfield Syncline.
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| Listed buildings in the Drone Valley |
My plan for the next leg of my Photo Challenge was to walk down to Chesterfield Road, which together with the Midland Railway and the River Drone runs along the hinge line of the syncline, before carrying on up the other side of the valley to Quoit Green House – a distance of 1.5 km.
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| The topography of Dronfield |
Having consulted old Ordnance Survey (OS) maps when researching my day out, I knew that there wasn’t much to see and for the most part of the walk down Green Lane but, starting with some good views over the Drone Valley, there were a few highlights in a suburban area that is dominated by C20 housing of various styles.
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| A view down Green Lane |
Walking down the west side of the road, I passed various boundary walls that are presumably built with the Silkstone Rock but, except to photograph one section where both the iron stained sandstone with Liesegang rings and lime mortar are weathered, I didn’t stop to look at them.
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| A boundary wall on Green Lane |
Just beyond Derwent Road, I had a very quick look at a sandstone house that appears on the 1883 OS map, which is built with the same kind of sandstone and appears to have an old quarry face to the rear of it, but it is not marked as such on any of the maps.
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| A house and an old quarry on Green Lane |
Continuing past the junction with Snape Hill Lane, my next brief stop was to photograph a small Edwardian detached house, which has thinly coursed rock-faced sandstone walling with red brick quoins and window dressings, with a short terrace of Victorian houses just beyond it.
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| Edwardian and Victorian houses on Green Lane |
On the opposite side of the road are a few pairs of Edwardian villas, where the entrances have been landscaped with large angular blocks of sandstone, which remind me of the later Victorian houses on Fulwood Road in Sheffield.
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| Large blocks of sandstone used for garden landscaping |
From here, I just carried on down the hill through an area that is dominated by a small modern shopping precinct and the Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School, before reaching a section of the road that is bounded by high walls that belonged to the Victorian Dronfield School and Cliff House.
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| A rock outcrop on Green Lane |
At the junction with Callywhite Lane, I very pleased to find a very small exposure of thinly bedded Silkstone Rock at the junction of the boundary wall and the pavement. As a geologist, I always like to find an outcrop of rock when I least expect it and, on this occasion, I think that the field geologist at the British Geological Survey must have measured his 2 degree dip to the SSE here.
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| The River Drone |
Crossing a busy junction where three roads meet, on Chesterfield Road I took a quick photos of the channelled River Drone and followed it along Mill Lane, where I encountered a quite substantial quarry that again isn’t marked on the OS map.
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| An old quarry on Mill Lane |
The River Drone reappears alongside the south side of the road and various small works have been built next to it, with small bridges linking their entrances with the road. This channelled section continues east under the railway bridge down to an area where the 1898 OS map marks the Dronfield Works, which made shovels, a gas works and the Dronfield corn mill.
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| The River Drone on Mill Lane |
Another quarry face with a Victorian cottage built next to it can be seen immediately to the south of the railway line and to the north of this, which I didn’t explore, there is now a large industrial estate on a site that was once occupied by a steel works and Dronfield Silkstone Colliery.
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| An old quarry with a cottage on Mill Lane |
Finding a cut-through to Chesterfield Road, I made my way up Hallowes Lane to Quoit Green House, a large house that is dated 1613 and incorporates elements of an earlier building, with remodelling in the late C18 and further alterations and extensions in the C20.
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| Quoit Green House |
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