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