A Walk up Main Street in Birchover

 

A view down Main Street

An exploration of the wonderful Rowtor Rocks deserved a lot more time than the 20 minutes that I spent there but, having already spent 3½ hours travelling on four separate buses to get to Birchover, I still had Stanton Moor to explore and a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Stanton-in-Peak to complete.

 

The Druid Inn

 

I took a few quick snaps of the late C18 Grade II Listed Druid Inn, before going to have a look at the Millennium Stone, which records the production of grindstones in Birchover and is decorated with a copy of a Romanesque carving.This was found in a wall in a part of Birchover known as Uppertown, which came from a long since demolished late C11 to early C12 church. 

 

The Millennium Stone

 

The map of the Birchover Conservation Area and the 1898 edition of the 1:25,000 scale Ordnance Survey (OS) map shows that most of Birchover developed as a linear village along Main Street, with most of the buildings occupying its north side beneath a very steep sided fault bound outcrop of Ashover Grit. 

 

The Conservation Area and OS 1898 edition maps

The architectural character of Birchover is provided by the pink/red nature of the Ashover Grit, which was obtained from several quarries, including the still active Birchover Quarry, which produced the stone for the C20 houses and presumably for the older buildings. 

 

Views of Main Street

I briefly left Main Street to photograph Green House (1774), a Grade II* Listed house on The Green that is largely obscured by trees in its garden. This was the only building that came up on a Photo Challenge for the village and I just took a few record photos before retracing my steps. 

 

Green House

 

A little further up Main Street is Birchover war memorial (1922), which is in the form of a wheel cross and was made in the local Birchover stone by Messrs. W. Dakin and Sons of Matlock, but I didn’t take a close look at its details. 

 

Birchover war memorial

 

On the corner with Upper Town Lane is a Primitive Methodist Chapel (1867), which is not listed and was mainly of interest to me for its datestones, which record the date of construction and the addition of a west porch in 1928. 

 

The Primitive Methodist Chapel

 

At the top of Upper Town Lane is a small triangular green, upon which is set the Grade II Listed village well, dated probably to the early C19 according to Historic England and comprising an 8 feet square stone structure with a low wall topped with massive gritstone slabs and a projection to the north, which has a pyramidal cap and once contained a tap. 

 

The village well

 

On the north side of the road, in the heart of the Conservation Area, various buildings are packed into the area between the road and the steep hillside, with the terraced gardens rising up the slope, although many of these have been encroached upon by the woodland. 

 

A view of the north side of Main Street

A little further up Main Street, on the opposite side, is the old pinfold where stray cattle and sheep rounded up by the village pinder were kept, with the owner having to pay a fee before they were released. I had encountered a few of these before in villages on my travels, but this is quite substantial, with a high dry stone wall built out of large well squared and coursed blocks. 

 

The pinfold

Crossing back over the road, although set back at some distance, Jasmine Cottage is quite notable for the tooling of the stonework, where the walling stone has an unusual combination of boasted and punched finishes and the dressings have much bolder toolmarks that look like rustication.

 

Jasmine Cottage

Next to this is another substantial chapel with tall arched windows on the first floor of the south and west elevations, which I think makes a very significant contribution to the character of Main Street but the Conservation Area Appraisal barely mentions it. 

 

A chapel on Main Street

Continuing up Main Street, which becomes increasingly steep, I passed more houses that are marked on the 1894 OS map and are built with same Birchover stone as seen elsewhere in the village but, although contributing to the character of the Conservation Area, are not listed. 

 

A few views of the east end of Main Street

 

On the south side of Main Street, there has been a lot of infill development during the C20 and further up the hill, several houses very recently built at the end of the village show the physical characteristics of the Birchover stone when fresh and unweathered. 

 

New houses on Main Street

Before leaving Birchover, I went to have a quick look at the site of the former Barton Hill Quarry, which looked like a new housing development was about to be built there, judging by the access road that had been laid. 

 

The former Barton Hill Quarry site

The site was blocked off with heras fencing, which stopped me looking at any outcrops of the Ashover Grit that may still remain and I had to be content with a glimpse of a part of the quarry face in the back garden of one of the houses at the entrance to the site, which has been reinforced with rock bolts.

 

An exposure of Ashover Grit in a back garden

 

Rowtor Rocks in Birchover

 

A naturally formed tor and man made features at Rowtor Rocks

 

Leaving Darley Dale at 11:17 and alighting from the No. 172 bus opposite The Green in Birchover at 11:42, after 4 bus journeys and 3½ hours travel time from Treeton, when it would take just over an hour by car, I immediately set off to find Rowtor Rocks.

 

A geological map showing the Ashover Grit (AsG) around Birchover

When living in Bakewell, my girlfriend kept her horse at Birchover and I visited on several occasions and, although I had the task of assessing and surveying RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) in the Peak District National Park for their geotourism value, I wasn’t aware of this spectacular large tor. Set on the south-western tip of the outlier of the Ashover Grit that forms Stanton Moor, it is found immediately behind the Druid Inn but is largely obscured by trees.

 

The area around Birchover on the Ordnance Survey map

Looking at the 1:25,000 scale Ordnance Survey map of the area, it can be seen that on Stanton Moor and Harthill Moor to the west, which is another outlier of Ashover Grit and has craggy features like Robin Hood’s Stride, there are numerous cairns, standing stones and stone circles that date to the Bronze Age and carvings at the west end of Rowtor Rocks are considered to be of the same date.

 

An outcrop of Ashover Grit

 
Taking the permissive footpath to the west of the Druid Inn, which is on part of the land in the area owned by the Thornhill Settlement, I soon came across an outcrop of reddened Ashover Grit where the jointing separates large blocks that have been rounded along the edges.

 

The entrance to a cave made by Thomas Eyre

Getting close to it and noting a man made threshold to the entrance of a small cave like feature, a zig zag cut into the rock and an overhang, this may have been part of the modifications to the outcrop undertaken by Thomas Eyre, but I didn’t investigate further and instead took a minor path to a small outcrop from which to photograph the landscape to the north through a clearing.

 

A view to the north from Rowtor Rocks

Retracing my steps to the main footpath and continuing round to the north side of the main outcrop, in one place the rock had been cut to form crude steps and I noted that gaps between the massive rounded blocks of Ashover Grit were infilled with well squared and coursed walling.

 

Massive rounded blocks and well squared and coursed walling

Beyond this, the path opens up into a level area of land and tooling marks in the rock face show that the overhang here has been deliberately formed and there is an opening into a man made space that is lined with simple stone dressings. 

A modified outcrop with a man made cave

 
After peeking inside, I carried on along the path and immediately encountered another set of well formed steps that lead to a part of Rowtor Rocks where a jumble of large rounded blocks have detached themselves from the main outcrop which, as along the gritstone edges, would have been been initiated by cambering and subsequent solifluction when the region was subject to periglacial conditions during the Quaternary Period.
 

Views of large detached blocks of Ashover Grit

 

There is a very steep drop on the north side and, although I didn’t feel that this was a potential hazard during my brief exploration, some care had to be taken when observing the typical weathering features of the tor exposed here.

 

A view of the north side of the Rowtor Rocks tor

Similarly, when making my way around to the south side on a well worn path, although I did see further examples of Thomas Eyre’s alterations, I didn’t notice any of the Bronze Age rock art that has been observed here.

 

An altered outcrop on the south side of Rowtor Rocks

 
Although I had spent just 20 minutes having a quick look at this wonderful rock formation, it was enough to convince me that this would be a good site to include on a potential field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, to take in Stanton Moor and perhaps Robin’s Hood Stride.

 

A view of the south side of Rowtor Rocks

With this in mind, although the well worn path did not form a circular route around the outcrop and I would return by the route I had taken if leading the group, I was content to continue around the south side to look at further examples of large blocks that were slowly slipping down the steep slope and then scramble over a few more rocks to get back to my starting point.

 

Massive loose blocks slipping down the south side of Rowtor Rocks

 

A Very Brief Exploration of Darley Dale

 

A detail of the Whitworth Institute

 

After spending an inordinate amount of effort in planning my day out to the Peak District, with the intention of visiting Rowtor Rocks, Stanton Moor and Stanton-in-Peak, I alighted from The Little Sixes bus from Bakewell at the Whitworth Institute bus stop in Darley Dale.

 

Some of the listed buildings in Darley Dale

With approximately 40 minutes before I had to catch the No. 172 bus to Birchover, I immediately set about my task of finding some of the listed structures that had come up on a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Darley Dale. 

 

An interwar former bank building

 

Although not a listed building, I immediately noticed a former bank – now the Joni cafe - on the junction of the A6 and Chesterfield Road, which was built during the later interwar period and first appears on the 1945 edition of the Ordnance Survey map. The Neoclassical style of the pediment is quite unusual, but I was more interested in the reddened sandstone used to build it. 

 

Quarries around Darley Dale

 

As the Building Stones of England Database map explorer shows, very many quarries along the Derwent Valley worked the Ashover Grit, including the renowned uniformly buff coloured Stancliffe Darley Dale stone, the buff to often pink mottled sandstone from Stanton Moor and the distinctly reddened Birchover stone. The Wattscliffe stone from Elton has a lilac tinge and further south at Cromford, most of the houses flanking the B5306 – built by Richard Arkwright for his workers at Cromford Mill - are built out of reddened Ashover Grit. 

 

Birchover quarry

When visiting the Sheffield Board Schools, I encountered a reddish sandstone used for dressings at the Pomona Street, Western Road and Ranmoor schools, which the Victorian Society book - Building Schools for Sheffield 1870-1914 - describes as Matlock stone, but provides no details. 

 

An old lodge that served Darley Hall

Crossing Chesterfield Road, a buff gritstone built lodge sits at the entrance the drive to the Grade II Listed Darley Hall, which is now a care home and whose grounds, apart from the garden area surrounding the house, have now been covered in houses. 

 

A celebration of the passing of the Olympic Torch

 

Continuing north along the A6, I came across a milestone, dated 2012, which is one of 11 stones made by the local stonemason Andy Oldfield to commemorate the London 2012 Olympic Games. These stones were placed in each of the villages or towns that the Olympic Torch passed through on the way to the Olympic Park in the east end of London, which is a distance of 154 miles. 

 

A commemorative stone outside the Co-Op supermarket

 

On the opposite side of the A6, outside the Co-Op supermarket, another commemorative stone is set on a small green that includes an old cast iron lamp post that is surrounded by a circular bench. The 2000 date suggests that it was originally placed here as a Millennium Project, but an inscription also records the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. 

 

Views of the Whitworth Hotel

The first building on my Photo Challenge was the late Victorian Whitworth Hotel, which is built in gritstone ashlar with prominent mullioned windows on its front elevation and is connected with the adjoining Whitworth Institute (1890) – built by the widow of the Manchester industrialist Sir Joseph Whitworth, who lived in Stancliffe Hall. 

 

Views of the Whitworth Institute

 

The Mechanics’ Institute movement was conceived at the end of the 18th century as a means of improving the literacy and numeracy of working people and providing them with some basic technical education and Historic England considers this to be one of the most impressive late C19 institutes, with an indoor swimming pool and a billiard room in addition to the usual library, reading room and lecture hall. 

 

A view of the front elevation

 

It was designed by the Manchester architects James William Beaumont and Richard Fletcher Beaumont, in what Pevsner describes as a ‘free Tudor’ style, using Stancliffe Darley Dale stone for the fabric and Westmorland green slate for the roof. 

 

Darley Dale war memorial

 

There simply wasn’t enough time to look at these buildings closely and I proceeded to take a very quick look at Whitworth Park, with its war memorial in the form of a Celtic cross and the monument to Sir Joseph Whitworth (1894), which is also built with Darley Dale stone.

 

The Whitworth Monument

On each side of the base are bronze plaques that depict Sir Joseph and Lady Whitworth and also record some of his achievements of Sir Joseph in mechanical engineering and other fields, which includes the standardisation of screw threads and the development of the Whitworth rifle. 

 

Bronze plaques on the Whitworth Monument

I then quickly headed down Station Road until I reached Darley Station Houses (c.1849), a pair of semi-detached houses with round arched ground floor windows, which were built by Joseph Paxton at the same time as the opening of the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midland Junction Railway, which ended at Rowsley - where Paxton had built Midland Cottages in an identical style and also the old railway station. 

 

Darley Station Houses

The rail service on this line closed in 1967, as part of the severe cuts that followed the Beeching Report, but reopened in 1991 as part of the heritage steam services by Peak Rail, which runs from Rowsley to Matlock. 

The building on the south platform at Darley Dale railway station

 

The Historic England description of Darley Dale station (c.1849) on the south side of the line, which was on my Photo Challenge, makes no mention of its architect, but Pevsner suggests that the station building on the north side (c.1860) is possibly the work of Edward Walters. 

 

The building on the north platform at Darley Dale railway station

 

Retracing my steps along Station Road, the original cast iron mile post on the A6 was the last listed structure on my Photo Challenge and, having taken a single photo of this, I crossed over the road and only had to wait a few minutes before my bus arrived to take me to Birchover.

 

The mile post in Darley Dale