Geology in High Melton

 

A roadside exposure of the Cadeby Formation on Doncaster Road

When planning my day out to High Melton, to attend the Church Explorers Week event held by St. James’ church, I hadn’t thought about the interesting geology that can be found here – as I first discovered back in September 1997, when quickly looking at a small outcrop of the early Permian Yellow Sands Formation in Melton Park as the principal surveyor for the South Yorkshire RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) Group. 

 

The Yellow Sands Formation at Melton Park in 1997

 

At that time, I still used Fuji Velvia colour transparency film for most of my geological survey work, which was quite expensive and although this limited the number of photos that I took of any given subject, I surprisingly only took two photos of this outcrop – one of which was sent to Doncaster MBC to accompany a very basic site report. 

 

The geology around High Melton (Yellow Sands Formation = YwS)

Exposures of this geological formation, which comprises original and reworked sand dunes that formed in a basin below sea level before it was flooded by the Zechstein Sea, in a similar environment to the Mediterranean Sea in more recent geological times. These are very rare in South Yorkshire and I have only seen this at Watchley Crags, where the exposures are quite extensive - although I have subsequently seen this formation in a spectacular exposure in Pontefract and along the Greenway West railway cutting in Clowne. 

The entry for Melton Park in the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment

In 2007, I had the opportunity to take a much closer look at this site as part of the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment (pp. 37-41 in Appendix 1), when working temporarily for the British Geological Survey and I had much more time to undertake a thorough survey and by then had purchased a Nikon Coolpix 5400 digital camera. 

 

Photos of Melton Park in the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment

On this occasion, I discovered two small quarry faces in the old Melton Hall Quarry, which expose oolitic dolomitic limestones in the Wetherby Member of the Cadeby Formation. These contain shelly and pisolitic beds, iron staining along some of the joints, breccias and yellow beds, which contain reworked sand from the underlying Yellow Sands Formation. 

 

A photo of High Melton Hall taken in 2007

Having already photographed the historic buildings in High Melton, I still had plenty of time to visit St. James’s church and I wanted to take another look at these limestone outcrops and also High Melton Hall (1757), which I had described as being built with Ackworth Rock from the Pennine Upper Coal Measures Formation. 

 

High Melton on the Doncaster Heritage Map

I had lasted visited High Melton at the end of 2010, to meet with students of Fashion and Textile Design at the Doncaster College campus that was located here - as part of the AA2A (Artists Access to Art Colleges) programme to turn my Glowing Edges Designs into silk products – but I did not know that it closed in 2017 and that Newsholme Developments had purchased the land, with proposals to convert High Melton Hall into apartments, demolish the modern buildings and build over 100 houses on Melton Park. 

 

The proposal for the development of Melton Park

 

The Doncaster Heritage Map shows that Melton Park mostly lies in the Conservation Area, where there are two listed buildings and two scheduled monuments, as well as the wider area comprising a park of local historic interest set on the edge of the Magnesian Limestone escarpment. 

 

The Stables

 

Finding the whole area fenced off and thinking that any large scale development here would not be very appropriate, reinforced by online research when I got back home, I made my way back to Doncaster Road past The Stables, which are also built with sandstone and presumably contemporary with High Melton Hall, but which have been converted into a restaurant, coffee shop and other commercial uses. 

 

A roadside outcrop on Doncaster Road

 

Before setting off to find the entrance to St. James’ church, I went to have a close look at a few small roadside exposures of the Cadeby Formation that I had seen when first arriving on the public footpath from Marr. 

 

A largely overgrown outcrop on Doncaster Road

 

I had not noticed these on any of my previous visits and, on this occasion, they were partly overgrown. Although I did not have my Estwing hammer with me, I was determined to obtain a specimen for my rock collection. The small pieces that are collected are distinctly yellowish in colour, very finely granular and have minute grains of black manganese oxide that are disseminated throughout the body of the stone and also line small cavities.

 

Dolomitic limestone collected from the outcrop on Doncaster Road