Monuments at St. Peter's Church

 

A detail of the monument to Thomas Stringer and his wife Katherine

In its description of the Church of St. Peter the Apostle in Kirkthorpe, Historic England states that the chief merit of the church is a fine collection of C18 wall monuments but, as with other features in the church, the fieldwork officer essentially relies on Pevsner’s entry in his architectural guide for the West Riding of Yorkshire.

 

Pevsner's description of monuments in St. Peter's church

As a geologist, my main interest in mediaeval churches is in the stones used to build their fabric and, although I do have some interest in the decorative stones used in the monuments, any detailed description of church wall monuments is beyond my ability and is best left to members of organisations such as the Church Monuments Society. 

 

The monument to Charles Smyth

 

While photographing the principal architectural elements of the church, however, I did record some of the monuments and the first one that I came across in the north chapel was a simple memorial to Charles Smyth, who was mortally wounded during the Battle of Quatre Bras on 16th June 1815. It consists of a white Carrara marble plaque with a black brecciated marble surround, which is similar to the photo of Marmo Portoferraio from Elba, which is listed in Decorative Stone - The Complete Sourcebook by Monica T. Price. 

 

The monument to Sir Charles Dalston

Further along the wall of the north chapel is the substantial monument to Sir Charles Dalston 3rd Baronet (d.1723), who once occupied Heath Hall, along with his daughter Anne who died aged only 5 weeks. It is made with veined white marble that is probably also from Carrara, with the inscribed panel set in an arch with a broken segmental pediment above and flanked by Corinthian columns with fluted corbels at their base. 

 

The monument to Thomas Stringer and his wife Katherine

 

Next to this is the monument to Thomas Stringer (d.1731) and his wife Katherine, which was made by Giovanni Battista Guelfi, a leading Italian sculptor who worked in the late Baroque style and was favoured by established architects such as James Gibbs and William Kent. 

 

The monument to Thomas Stringer and his wife Katherine

 

Pevsner describes it as “Two detached busts on a sarcophagus with straight tapering sides. Background by Kent with inscription, a frame starting from two big volutes and crowned by an open segmental pediment. Carved coat-of-arms with putti”. It is made with a veined white marble, with the surround to the sarcophagus in black marble of unknown provenance. 

 

The grave slab of Joseph Thornton

 

Briefly returning to the nave, an interesting design on the sandstone grave slab of Joseph Thornton (d.1712) caught my eye, but again this would be best described by a specialist in this field and I returned to the north chapel to photograph the monument to John Smyth (d.1731).

 

The monument to John Smyth

The original squire of Heath was John Smyth (1654-1729), who made his fortune as a wool stapler, but this is presumably his son (1685-1731) and a genealogist is best qualified to unravel the history of the Smyth family. Pevsner’s description is “Two putti uncovering his portrait on an oval medallion. A pretty conceit, prettily rendered”.

 

The monument to Lady Georgiana Smyth

 

The white marble monument of Lady Georgiana Smyth (d.1799), the mother of the Charles Smyth whose memorial has been briefly described above, also commemorates 2 infant children and her husband, another John Smyth (d.1811). According to Pevsner, this and other monuments in the north chapel are signed by John Flaxman and he describes it as “A perfectly plain tablet with an attic over. A shield and some ornamental enrichment on this”. 

 

The monument to John Leake

 

The only other monuments that I noted were those of the vicar of Warmfield cum Heath, John Leake (d.1740), which has its painted inscription cut into a triangular veined white marble panel that is topped with a heraldic crest and escutcheon, and John Burton (d.1743), a London merchant who, due to ill health, retired to Heath and spent the last 20 years of his life there. 

 

The monument to John Burton

 

St. Peter's Church in Kirkthorpe - Part 2

 

The spiral staircase in the tower

After a quick look at the exterior of the Church of St. James the Apostle in Kirkthorpe, where I had been most interested in the generally poor durability of the sandstone and its unusual soft sediment deformation structures, I went inside and introduced myself to the members of its congregation who were welcoming visitors to their Heritage Open Days event. 

 

A view of the nave and arcade

 

My first task, as usual, was to make a general photographic record of the principal elements of the church, of which only the presumably C14 arcade is referred to in my copy of the reprinted 1967 edition of Pevsner and essentially repeated by Historic England (HE) in its listing description. 

 

An edited description in Pevsner - The West Riding

 

I took a few photos of the arcade, including the quatrefoil section, clustered colonnettes with moulded capitals and fleurons, but I didn’t spend any time examining them closely and continued through the wide shallow pointed arch to the chancel. 

 

A detail of a complex capital with fleurons

 

I have got used to the rather brief and haphazard descriptions offered by Pevsner and, on this occasion, it seems that the HE fieldwork officer hasn’t made much of an effort to undertake any further research on the architectural details and there is no mention of the chancel and the decorated panels with ogee arches and finials, which are placed either side of the reredos. 

 

The chancel

The east end of the church, according to the church guide, was extended by 3 yards in the 1850’s, but I didn’t see anything obvious in the masonry of the arcade between the chancel and north chapel, which might record this. 

 

The arcade between the chancel and north chapel

 

The headstop above the column to the central bay looks very weathered and is quite crude compared to the obviously Victorian headstop on the western respond and is presumably original, with the latter being a later replacement, but again I didn't closely examine any of the masonry at the east end of the church. 

 

A weathered headstop

 

The walls of the nave and north aisle contain numerous C18 marble wall monuments, which obscure much of the stonework and I just took a few record photos of these without looking at their details and will briefly describe these in my next post. 

 

A view along the nave from the chancel

 

From the chancel, I took a couple of photos along the nave and walked down to the west end, where the font is placed in the centre of the nave in front of a screen that hides the organ. This simple cup shaped font has a 1718 date carved in raised numerals and, according to the church guide is made from Caen stone from Normandy - probably best known for its use at the White Tower at the Tower of London and for the cathedrals at Canterbury and Rochester. 

 

The font

 

During my visit, I had a good talk with one of the churchwardens about the arcade and various other features, as well as having another look at the condition of the external stonework with him, and I didn’t explore the details of the church as well as I would have done if I was by myself. 

 

An account of the history in the church guide

 

When sitting down to write this Blog post, 18 months after my visit, I was interested to read in the church guide about its Saxon origins and Norman and mediaeval history, but I was very surprised by Peter Ryder’s description in Medieval Churches of West Yorkshire: “The three western bays of the nave seem to be of 12th century date (some areas of typically ‘Norman’ masonry survive, along with part of the rear arch of the original south door”, as I didn’t notice any of this. 

 

Anorther view of the spiral staircase in the tower

Having plenty of time before the next hourly No. 189 bus to Wakefield, I took advantage of the opportunity to go up to the top of the roof of the tower, as I had done previously at All Saints church in Aston and St. Peter and St. Paul’s church in Barnby Dun. 

 

The ladder to the belfry

After walking up the spiral staircase to the ringing room, while holding on tightly to the rope that substitutes for a hand rail, I was a bit surprised to see that there was a long ladder up to the belfry, which I duly ascended; however, I was completely unprepared for the final leg up to the roof, which entailed a scramble through the bell frame. 

 

A view of the bell frame

I wasn’t very happy about doing this but, having got so far up the tower, I could hardly turn back and so I gritted my teeth and carefully followed instructions, before exiting onto the roof via a loft hatch and then encountering a castellated parapet that appeared far too low for my liking. 

 

The stone slate roof to the tower

 

Even though I have been on very many scaffolds while working in the building restoration industry, I have never been very comfortable at heights and, as I did when on the roof of All Saints church, my first instinct was to look for the flagpole to cling to; however, finding only a steep stone slate roof, I declined the invitation to walk around the roof along the lead gutter, took a few quick snaps and retraced my steps to the bottom of the tower, where I was offered a much needed cup of tea.

 

Views from the roof of the tower

 

St. Peter's Church in Kirkthorpe - Part 1

 

A weathered headstop on the porch

Arriving at the Grade II* Listed Church of St. Peter the Apostle in Kirkthorpe, having walked from Heath, I firstly took a photo of the unlisted war memorial, which is made of grey granite from the Cornubian Batholith in south-west England and is in the form of a plain Celtic cross. 

 

Kirkthorpe war memorial

 

Before starting my investigation of the exterior of the church, I had a quick look at the group of 9 Grade II Listed headstones, dated 1814-18, which commemorate Benedictine Nuns who fled from the French Revolution in 1792 and resided at Heath Old Hall from 1811 to 1821. 

 

The headstones of Benedictine Nuns

 

In the Pevsner guide and the Historic England (HE) description, the only information provided about the external fabric is that the Perpendicular Gothic style tower and north aisle date to the C14, with the body of the church being rebuilt c.1875 and the tower parapet renewed c.1904. 

 

The south elevation

 

Walking anticlockwise around the church, I firstly took general record photographs of the nave, where the square headed windows with cusped lights are presumably a like for like replacement of the original C14 design. 

 

The nave

 

The church guide doesn’t say very much about the fabric of the church, except to mention that the church was extended and altered by 3 yards in the 1850’s and Peter Ryder, in his Medieval Churches of West Yorkshire (1993) writes “In 1850-51 the church was ‘almost rebuilt’ at a cost of £1300; both nave and chancel were extended eastward by an extra bay, and most of the external walls refaced”, but there is no mention of later works referred to by HE.

 

The chancel

 

Ryder goes on further to say that it is now very difficult to distinguish between the genuine mediaeval and the C19 work. During my initial very quick walk around its exterior, I didn’t look closely at the stonework but, looking at my high resolution photos, the profiles of very many of the weathered individual blocks look far too irregular for them to be Victorian. 

 

A headstop on the east window of the chancel

I can see sections of walling where there is modern restoration work with both plain ashlar and tooled blocks, especially at the east end of the chancel, which seems to suggest that the sandstone used to extend the church is not very durable. Furthermore, one of the headstops to the east window of the chancel has lost most of its detail and masonry to the east end of the Lady Chapel is very weathered in places, which is exacerbated by hard sand and cement pointing. 

 

Weathered masonry on the east wall of the Lady Chapel

Moving round to the north aisle, I noted that the flat headed windows, which have different patterns of tracery, have the same designs as those on the south elevation, but I didn’t pay that much attention to them and was more interested in the physical characteristics of the stone used. 

 

A view along the north elevation

In the Wakefield area, the best building stone was obtained from the Woolley Edge Rock, which I have seen in several historic buildings, but its characteristic striped appearance is not seen in the fabric of the church The area is underlain by the Oaks Rock from the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation and I assume that this has been used in its construction. 

 

A sandstone block showing soft sediment deformation

The medium grained cross-bedded sandstone is grey/light brown and some orange/red colour variation, with differential weathering highlighting the graded bedding, which is common in the Coal Measures sandstones; however, I was very interested to see a block that displays soft sediment deformation – a feature that I had seen in natural rock outcrops at Wharncliffe Crags and Otley Chevin, but never in a building. 

 

The gargoyle on the Lady Chapel

On the north-east corner of the Lady Chapel, there is a sculpture that looks to be mediaeval, but I presume that this was taken down from the tower along with a couple of pinnacles that decorate the churchyard and reset in its current position. 

 

A buttress on the north aisle with a figurative carving

 

I have seen very many gargoyles and grotesques over the years, where they are usually positioned below parapets to the tower, clerestory, aisles and porch, but a sculpture in human form is built into one of the capping stones to a buttress on the north aisle – a feature that I don’t ever recall seeing before. 

 

A window in the south elevation of the chancel

 

The modern toilet block and the attached church hall prevented me from continuing my walk around the exterior of the church, so I retraced my steps and had another look at the masonry and windows to the south elevation of the chancel. 

 

A weathered headstop

 

Several blocks of stone have been quite recently restored and, if the original masonry is actually Victorian, this again indicates that the sandstone used for the walling is not very good quality and some of the headstops are at an advanced stage of deterioration. 

 

Soft sediment deformation structures

 

Looking closely at the stonework, I could see several more examples of soft sediment deformation and continuing to the porch, where the sandstone is quite orange in colour, both of the headstops are quite badly decayed. 

 

The porch

 

I finished my quick look at the exterior of St. Peter’s church by taking a few photographs of the tower, which is the only part of the church that is unequivocally C14 in date, but which the HE description says had its Perpendicular Gothic style windows renewed in the C19. 

 

The south window of the tower

 

Looking at the south window, the crude headstops do not look Victorian to me and the profiles of the tracery looks very sharp, which suggests that it has been recently restored with a much better quality West Yorkshire sandstone. I finished my quick examination of the exterior by photographing the west window and its headstops, before going to have at a look at the interior.

 

The west window of the tower and details of the headstops

 

A Walk From Heath to Kirkthorpe

 

The village entrance marker at Kirkthorpe

Starting by taking photographs of Nos. 1 and 2 Horse Race End on the southern edge of Heath Common and finishing by photographing the Kirkthorpe Lane Heath Hall bus stop, which very unusually is marked by an old gate post, it only took me 53 minutes to briefly explore Heath.

 

The Kirkthorpe Lane Heath Hall bus stop

 

In my travels in and around South Yorkshire as a ‘heritage tourist’, the villages of Wentworth as an estate village, Edensor as a model village and Elsecar for its industrial heritage have all made a great impression on me. Even from such a short visit, I place Heath alongside them and would like to see further information about its history or a Conservation Area Appraisal that emphasises its heritage value, such as the one that has been produced for Whitwell. 

 

Listed buildings in Heath

Criss-crossing the common, I could only obtain access to a mounting block and two pairs of gate piers that were on my list of 9 items on my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, but I did manage to photograph the listed buildings that are scattered around its edges.

 

A signpost on the Transpennine Trail

 

Nonetheless, this provided a great start to my day out and heading along Kirkthorpe Lane on my way to the Church of St. Peter the Apostle in Kirkthorpe, to attend their Heritage Open Days event, I was interested to see what I would find along the public footpath that was marked on my copy of the Ordnance Survey (OS) map and the sign showed as being on the Trans Pennine Trail.

 

The public footpath to Kirkthorpe shown on the Ordnance Survey map

Following the path down the escarpment of the Oaks Rock, I eventually came to an information panel that informed me that I was now in the Southern Washlands Nature Corridor. Many parts of this, especially to the north of the railway line, were quarried for sand and gravel and had been despoiled by a coal mine and other industrial uses.

 

An information panel for the Southern Washlands Nature Corridor

Continuing along the footpath, I got occasional glimpses of an oxbow lake that had become detached from the River Calder, which is marked on old OS maps as The Half Moon. There was no sign of any rock exposure but I collected a couple of samples of medium grained grey/light brown sandstone that I presume is the Oaks Rock.

 

A view of The Half Moon

Not long before I arrived at Kirkthorpe, the path turned into a track and I carried along this until I reached Half Moon Lane, on the corner of which is a sandstone built house with a stone slate roof, which has three arched windows in the south and north gable ends and looks like a chapel.

 

The Old Sunday School

 
A building here is marked on the 1907 OS map, but not the 1894 map, as a Sunday School, which dates it to the very late Victorian or early Edwardian era and, although not listed, it appears in modern planning application documents as the Old Sunday School.

 

Sycamore Cottage

A little further up Half Moon Lane is the unassuming Sycamore Cottage, where a mid C16 timber frame - which can still be seen beneath the eaves - was encased c.1690 in masonry that comprises large sandstone blocks. Although not mentioned in the Historic England description, this C17 remodelling probably included the insertion of stone mullioned windows, which have since been removed during later alterations.

 

Frieston's Hospital

I could only get views of the northern end of the Grade I Listed Frieston’s Hospital (c.1595), former almshouses designed to accommodate 7 poor men, which the Historic England description further states was ingeniously contrived so as to require only one fireplace.

 

The muncipal boundary marker on Half Moon Lane

 
At the end of the front garden wall is a sandstone municipal boundary marker of unknown date, which records the meeting of the parish of Warfield cum Heath and the City of Wakefield, but it has been moved from its original location.

 

The village stocks in Kirkthorpe

Arriving back on Kirkthorpe Lane, I took a couple of photos of the Grade II Listed village stocks before having a quick walk around the extension to St. Peter’s churchyard, where there are 4 Commonwealth War Grave Commission headstones.

 

A deail of the headstone of Pilot Officer R.M. Woodhead

Of these, the headstone of Pilot Officer R.M. Woodhead most caught my attention, mainly for the regimental crest of the Royal Canadian Air Force, which I hadn’t seen before. Also, the memorial mason’s worksheet has a stamp that marks it as being made from Stancliffe Darley Dale gritstone, when I can clearly see that it is Portland stone that has weathered to the extent that the large fragments of oyster shells stand out very proud.

 

The worksheet for the headstone of Pilot Officer R.M. Woodhead