The Church of St Mary in the Wood

 

A view of the ruined interior of the Church of St. Mary in the Wood

Leaving Scatcherd Park, having spent an hour in Morley after alighting from the No. 51 bus on Victoria Road, I headed off towards the Church of St. Mary in the Wood (1878), 12 Grade II Listed tombs and a mausoleum were part of my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge. 

 

The Historic England map of St. Mary in the Wood's churchyard

 

The church became redundant in 2008 and, after being purchased and a planning application submitted to convert it into a luxury hotel, a devastating fire in 2010 left it in ruins, with the site since being left unmanaged and becoming heavily overgrown. 

 

The main entrance to the Church of St. Mary in the Wood

Arriving at the entrance to the churchyard on Commercial Street, I found that the gates were secured by a padlock and chain and, hoping that I might find another way to get into the churchyard, I retraced my steps and headed along Troy Road. Having caught several glimpses of the ruins from the footpath, I eventually came to another entrance to the churchyard where the aluminium gate was easily surmounted. 

 

Views from Commercial Street and Troy Road

 

Following a path that was not actually thickly overgrown, I soon obtained my first good view of the church, which was designed in a Gothic Revival style by the architects Lockwood and Mawson from Bradford, whose work I had seen before at Salts Mill, its associated housing and Saltaire Congregational Church. 

 

A view of the north elevation

 

With the benefit of the map from the Historic England website, which pinpoints the listed tombs much better than the map on the British Listed Buildings website, it wasn’t long before I was able to find a pair of chest tombs belonging to members of the Asquith family. 

 

The Asquith chest tombs

I took a few general photos of the west end of the church from a distance, but the churchyard in places had very dense undergrowth that prevented easy access to the structure and I didn’t get close enough to make out any details of the masonry. 

 

Views of the north and west elevations

When I found that my anticlockwise traverse around the exterior of the church could not go any further, I made my way back towards the north side and next encountered the raised grave slab of William Havden (1699), which wasn’t that easy to locate beneath the nettles, ivy, algae and sycamore seeds that were partially obscuring it. 

 

The raised grave slab of William Havden

 

The chest tomb of Anne Lister (c.1735) is one of four set very close together, which all have a similar simple form without any obvious distinguishing features. Although the Historic England records its inscription, I had to clamber on to the most accessible of these and scrutinise the group closely before I could make out her name. 

 

The chest tomb of Anne Lister

 

The table tomb of Sarah Jubb (d.1790) was quite easy to find, with it described as “approximately 1 metre east of north-east corner of church”, although knowing that the Historic England descriptions are not always very accurate and sometimes quite wrong, I again had to stand on the slab so that I could read the inscription.

 

The table tomb of Sarah Judd

Next on my list of tombs to photograph is named by Historic England as: “Group of 3 Raised Tomb Slabs Set Between Central Buttresses to North Aisle of Church of St Mary”. As with the Havden and Lister tombs, the listing description cites the inscriptions on the three separate tombs as a single block of jumbled up text. 

 

The presumed site of the group of three raised tomb slabs

 

I was really quite surprised to see that these have passed through their editorial process without being corrected but, given that their descriptions typically consist of endless lines of text that are not broken down into paragraphs – a basic skill that children are taught at a very early age – they don't seem to give much thought to how these come across to the end user. 

 

Vegetation and saplings growing through a grave slab

On this occasion, this was actually quite academic, because the tombs have become so overgrown by bracken, ivy, grass, dandelions, moss and saplings growing through a fracture in the only slab visible and I couldn’t see any inscription and, based on their position in relation to the north aisle, I can only presume that I had located the grave slabs in question. 

 

Another view of vegetaion on a grave slab

 

For my Photo Challenges that include tombs and gravestones, it is impractical to print the full listing description and I rely on the maps and plans that are available and take enough photographs of them to enable me to refer to the Historic England descriptions when I get home and have access to my computer. The grave slabs of Martha Balmforth (1795) and Benjamin Hopperton (1785) were relatively easy to find, but the recording of their inscriptions by Historic England are again a jumble of words that make little sense. 

 

The worksheet for my Photo Challenge

 

With time moving on, I walked round to the south side of the church to quickly look for the remaining 7 tombs on my list to photograph but, seeing that they were also covered in moss and other vegetation that had accumulated over the years and with nothing at hand to remove them, I decided not to spend any more time looking for them. 

 

Various tombs on the north side of the church

 

Even in a well maintained churchyard, I have usually found it quite difficult to track down listed tombs and gravestones for a Photo Challenge, due to the lichen, moss and algae that accumulates on them and also that the inscriptions are often weathered and barely legible. I am usually quite diligent in my investigations but on this occasion, after taking a few general record photographs of the Scatcherd Mausoleum, I headed off towards the centre of Morley. 

 

The Scatcherd Mausoleum

 

Chapel Hill to Scatcherd Park in Morley

 

A detail of the commemorative wall at Morley war memorial

Continuing my exploration of Morley, having had a quick walk along Victoria Road and Church Street, I made my way down Chapel Hill and soon came to the next building on my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, the rear elevation of the Grade II Listed Nos. 2-6 Chapel Hill – a group of double decker houses designed for steep slopes, which were built in two phases c.1800. 

 

The rear of Nos. 2-6 Chapel Hill

 

Reaching the botom of Chapel Hill, I took a few photos of a few of the buildings that were constructed in the second half of the century, where the local Thornhill Rock has been used for both hammer dressed walling and fine ashlar. 

 

Victorian buildings at Morley Bottoms

 

At Morley Bottoms, all of the roads descend from higher ground, except for Station Road to the east, which I followed for a short distance mainly to obtain views of the front three storied elevation of Nos. 2-6 Chapel Hill, where the lower parts are excavated into the hillside behind. 

 

The front elevation of Nos. 2-6 Chapel Hill

 

Although there is now no sign of the stream, Valley Beck, Station Road sits in a distinct valley that is clearly marked on the topographic map of England and along which the Leeds to Huddersfield railway runs, before it enters a tunnel beneath Morley. 

 

The topography around Morley Bottoms

 

When researching my day out, I had noticed that the ground rises very steeply on the south side of Station Road to form Troy Hill, below which the 1854 Ordnance Survey (OS) map marks Pinfold Quarry, but this had closed and was partly redeveloped with houses by the time the 1894 edition of the OS map was published. 

 

An overgrown face at the old Pinfold Quarry

 

I walked along Station Road to investigate and, at the rear of the car parking area behind a row of terraced houses, I encountered an old quarry face that was largely overgrown, but I found a corner where a section of the Thornhill Rock was accessible behind some rubbish bins. 

 

An exposure of the Thornhill Rock

 

Although I didn’t have my Estwing hammer with me, I managed to prise out a loose piece of flaggy sandstone at the base of the exposure and break it into a couple of smaller specimens to add to my rock collection. Examining this at home, these are very fine grained, light brown in colour with thin beds in the body of the stone highlighted by iron staining, with occasional very small flakes of white muscovite mica. 

 

Specimens of Thornhill Rock

Retracing my steps to Morley Bottoms, I headed up Queen Street until I got sight of the next building on my list to photograph, the early to mid C19 Dawson House – a textile warehouse with an attached manager’s house. Morley is part of the Heavy Woollen District, where many textile mills operated to produce recycled cloth and it developed as the centre of the shoddy trade. 

 

Dawson House

I next went to have a look for Morley Hall, built in 1683 by the textile manufacturer Thomas Dawson, whose descendants presumably later built Dawson House, but I had discovered using Google Street View that this house would not be easy to to see from the public highway; however, from Scarth Gardens it was possible to get glimpses of the house. 

 

Views of Morley Hall from Scarth Gardens

My next stop was the Grade II Listed Morley war memorial (1927) in Scatcherd Park, which was not part of my Photo Challenge but, having seen photographs of the memorial in its landscaped flower garden setting, I was very keen to visit it. 

 

Morley war memorial

 

It comprises a bronze statue of Britannia in a Roman dress, who is wearing an elaborate plumed helmet adorned with seahorses and holding a trident in one hand and a statue of a winged man kneeling on one knee in the other. It is set on a tall plinth made of tooled grey granite, with biotite mica, but I didn’t study its minerals with my hand lens and can’t assign a provenance to it. 

 

A detail of Britannia at Morley war memorial

 

On leaving Scatcherd Park, I stopped very briefly to photograph a large boulder of Thornhill Rock, to which is attached a bronze plaque that marks the entrance to Hopkins Gardens. It states that it was presented to the town by Mrs R. Borrough Hopkins and Family on 8th April 1936 on the Golden Jubilee of the Incorporation of the Borough of Morley and also that its area comprises 1 acre 15 perches.

 

A commeroration of the opening of Hopkins Gardens

 

Victoria Road & Church Street in Morley

 

A view of the Church of St. Mary in the Wood from Church Street

Setting off on the TM Travel X54 bus (now the No. 71) from Treeton at 8:14, very few passengers use this early Saturday morning service and, with their driver sticking to the usual habit of speeding very fast along the route into Sheffield, I arrived in time to catch the 8:48 train to Leeds. 

 

A detail of the entrance to the Nelson Arms

Having planned my day out in detail, I quickly made my way to the Corn Exchange D bus stop on Vicar Lane and, at 10:20, I alighted from the No. 52 bus at the Church Street stop in Morley and immediately took a couple of photos of the Nelson Arms public house. 

 

The Nelson Arms

This was not part of the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge that I had prepared for Morley, but I presumed that it is built with sandstone from the Thornhill Rock in the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation, which underlies the town and has been extensively quarried for its good quality building stone. 

 

The Thornhill Rock around Morley

 

First on my Photo Challenge was the cast iron milepost on Victoria Road but, being of little interest to this Language of Stone Blog, I retraced my steps along Victoria Road and took a few quick snaps of St. Peter’s Sunday School (1832), which was originally a District National Parish School and is built in a Gothic Revival style. 

 

Views of St. Peter's Sunday School

 

I then had a quick wander around the exterior of St. Peter’s church (1830), an example of a Commissioners’ church, which was built with money voted by Parliament as a result of the Church Building Acts of 1818 and 1824. The architect, R.D. Chantrell, also designed Leeds Minster and the church was built on land granted by the Lord of the Manor, the Earl of Dartmouth. 

 

Views of St. Peter's church

 

The church is quite substantial in its dimensions and I had to take photographs at a distance, except for the sculpted details on the band course beneath the east window of the chancel, which was added c.1885 by Walter Hanstock of Batley, but I didn’t get near enough to the masonry to take a good look at the sandstone that has been used here. 

 

A sculptural detail on the band course beneath the east window

At the junction of Victoria Road and Church Street, No. 55 Church Street is a substantial house that has identical north and east elevations with a central door and a canted bay window to the left, which both appear quite unusually to be the principal façade. 

 

The east elevation of No. 55 Church Street

 

I didn’t study the sandstone close up, but from a distance I can see that it is generally plane bedded, with differentially weathered beds suggesting that it is fine grained and contains a fair proportion of silt. This observation is supported by its grey/light brown colour, which is quite typical of the finer grained Coal Measures sandstones, although it does have some orange iron staining. 

 

The 1894 Ordnance Survey map of the area around Church Street

Heading down Church Street on the west side of the road, I passed a couple of terraces of blackened sandstone houses, which includes back to backs, which are the remains of a development of housing that the 1894 Ordnance Survey (OS) map shows as being built in the second half of the C19. 

 

A remnant of the Albion Mills

 

Passing through an area of mixed residential and commercial premises, where the C19 houses have been demolished and the land has mainly been redeveloped, I briefly stopped to take a photograph of a brick building with stone dressings that caught my eye. I went over to look at a plaque that is attached to it, which I discovered is a memorial to the workers at the Albion Mills who died during the Great European War – dated as 1914-1919. 

 

A war memorial plaque

 

Approaching the junction of Church Street and New Bank Street, I was interested to see a couple of buildings with three shops on the ground floor, which have architectural detailing to the first floor – including a datestone of 1914 above Nos. 2b and 2c – that suggests that these buildings served an additional purpose other than residential use, however, the OS maps don’t highlight them and a Google search doesn’t throw up any information about their history.

 

Nos. 2, 2b and 2c Church Street

 

Planning a Day Out to Morley

 

The Historic England map of the Listed Buildings in Morley

My day out to the Peak District in May 2024, to explore the geology and archaeology of Rowtor Rocks and Stanton Moor and to photograph the listed buildings in Stanton in Peak, proved very productive, although a total of 7 separate bus journeys getting from Treeton and back, which required a great deal of planning, took up most of the day. 

 

Treeton to Morley as the crow flies

 

Just over a week later, I set off to Morley in West Yorkshire, which this time would require two bus journeys and a train journey each way. I had caught the train to Leeds and then travelled by bus from a stop in the city centre to my final destination many times and, on this occasion, I discovered from the West Yorkshire Metro website that I needed to catch the No. 51/52 bus on the Morley Line from Corn Exchange D on Vicar Lane. 

 

Information on routes and the bus stops in Leeds city centre

I have been quite dismayed, however, by the fact that West Yorkshire Metro don’t provide a route map on their bus timetables, which makes it very difficult for a stranger in town to plan a day out without consulting Google Map or undertaking extensive research on the internet – a task that I can do easily on my PC but not on my mobile phone. 

 

Stopping points on the No. 51/52 bus route

 

It also doesn’t help that the current timetable erroneously marks the stopping points, with the starting point for Leeds to Morley routes actually starting in Morley and vice-versa – a fundamental error that I have discovered in other timetables, when planning further days out to Leeds – and that very few timing points are listed. 

 

Timed stopping points on the No. 51/52 bus route

 

After visiting Dewsbury a couple of years earlier, when undertaking research on Dewsbury Town Hall (1886-1889) for my Language of Stone Blog, I discovered that the Historic England description cites gritstone from Holmfirth as being used in its construction, whereas an article written by a someone from the area said that an unspecified local stone had been used. 

 

Dewsbury Town Hall

 

I presume that this was a reference to the Thornhill Rock from the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation, which had developed a good reputation as a building stone and was extensively quarried at Morley. I also discovered that the architects, Holtom and Fox had also been responsible for Morley Town Hall (1892-95) which, according to the Building Research Establishment publication “The building sandstones of the British Isles” and the Calder Masonry website, is built using Woodkirk Brown stone from the Britannia Quarry. 

 

The location of some of the quarries on the Thornhill Rock

The main reason for my visit to Morley was to see Morley Town Hall and have a walk around the town to look at its listed buildings as part of a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, which I assumed would reveal further examples of locally quarried Thornhill Rock. 

 

A technical information sheet for Woodkirk stone

 

I had only seen this fine grained sandstone in the paving and steps at Quarry House in Leeds, when writing an article for the now online Natural Stone Specialist magazine, following which Pawson Brothers paid for one of my photos for their technical information sheet. Also, along with Howley Park stone from the Thornhill Rock, a sample of Woodkirk stone was included in the Triton Stone Library in London, which has since been redisplayed in a slightly modified form in the Redmires Building at Sheffield Hallam University. 

 

The Triton Stone Library in the Redmires Building