Thornhill Rock at Morley Town Hall

 

A detail of the tower on Morley Town Hall

Although a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge had given me a good opportunity to explore the old textile manufacturing town of Morley, the main reason for my visit was to see Morley Town Hall (1895) - based on research on Dewsbury town hall (1889) a couple of years earlier, when I learned that the architectural practice Holtom and Fox had designed both of these. 

 

A description of the Thornhill Rock in the geological memoir

I was particularly interested to discover from the ‘Building sandstones of the British Isles', published by the Building Research Establishment’ and the website of Calder Masonry that Woodkirk Brown sandstone from the Britannia Quarry had been used for Morley Town Hall.

 

A further description of the Thornhill Rock

The Thornhill Rock from the Pennine Mddle Coal Measures Formation was highlighted by the Geological Survey of Britain geological memoir (1940) as being a valuable building stone that had acquired a high reputation in the building trades. As a geologist, I was particularly interested to have a good look at its physical characteristics and how it had fared after nearly 130 years. 

 

Morley Town Hall

 

Approaching it from the northern end of Queen Street at 11:25 am, having stopped to look at the war memorial in Scatcherd Park, I was a little disappointed to see that its main façade, which has a north-easterly aspect, was already in the shade. 

 

The portico

 

Whereas my previous Canon PoweShot cameras would have easily coped with this, the Panasonic Lumix TZ100 which I reluctantly bought when Canon/John Lewis customer service refused to replace my camera – despite the shutter on my last G7X II model failing 3 times within the warranty period – sometimes struggles with less than ideal lighting conditions. 

 

The pediment frieze sculpture

 

Nevertheless, with some fine adjustments of the exposure, I managed to obtain some decent images of the pediment frieze sculpture, which is described by Historic England (HE) as depicting “justice seeking advice from the good Queen, surrounded by figures of Industries and Useful Arts”, but the description on the Morley Town Heritage Walk gives another account – although I can’t readily recognise the statue of Queen Victoria. 

 

A detail of the frieze sculpture

 

HE further describe it as being designed by G.A. Fox in a Classical style design with a Baroque domed tower and, in his entry in the Yorkshire West Riding volume of the Buildings of England, Pevsner particularly noted the portico with six giant Composite columns and a pediment and writes that “The scheme is clearly derived from the Leeds town hall”. 

 

Leeds Town Hall

 

Moving round to the south-east facing elevation, the masonry consists of fine sandstone ashlar laid in courses with a considerable bed height, which can be seen in the rusticated ground floor and those above, which are punctuated by pilasters that have very large Corinthian capitals.

 

The south-east elevation

 

Moving closer to this elevation and taking a look at the masonry, which has evidently been cleaned – sandblasted 1972/1973 according to the Yorkshire Evening Post - I didn’t notice any marked deterioration or sections where it has been obviously restored and the fine grained Woodkirk Brown sandstone used appears to be in very good condition. Similarly, my general photographs of the Corinthian capitals and other high level details, don’t show any obvious deterioration of the stone. 

 

Views of the south-east elevation

 

Surprisingly, the Expected Durability and Performance section of the Building Research Establishment (BRE) report on the series of laboratory tests undertaken on the Woodkirk Brown sandstone states that “Woodkirk appears to be a durable stone but its failure in the acid immersion test indicates limited resistance to acid rain or air pollution”. 

 

An extract from BRE report on Woodkirk Brown sandstone

 

I didn’t spend any time closely examining the stonework of the historic buildings that I noticed when walking around Morley, but several buildings that I photographed were quite blackened and old photographs from the 1960’s, published in the Yorkshire Evening Post, show that the sulphurous emissions produced by the numerous mills in Morley must have been considerable. 

 

Face bedding in the rusticated ground floor masonry

 

Having specialist interests in building stone, first acquired more than 35 years ago when working in the building restoration industry, my eye is trained to observe defects in stonework and I immediately noticed the delamination of some face bedded blocks of stone in the rusticated masonry around the front entrance. 

 

The Weaver

 

Here I was very interested to see The Miner and The Weaver sculptures, carved in Woodkirk Brown stone by the Dewsbury based artist Melanie Wilks back in 2007, which commemorate the coal mining and textile manufacturing industries on which Morley prospered. 

 

The Miner

 

I finished my very brief look at the exterior of Morley Town Hall by photographing the foundation stone laid on 8th October 1892 by Alderman Thomas Clough - the Mayor of the Borough of Morley – which incorporates a gold painted inscription on a plaque made of polished Peterhead granite, from the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland. 

 

The foundation stone