An Exploration of Campsall I

 

The retaining wall to the Old Rectory

 

During Church Explorers Week in 2024, having already visited St. James’ church in High Melton and the Church of St. Michael and All Angels in Brodsworth, which had both involved 2 bus journeys and a train journey from Treeton and back, the last event that I attended was at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Campsall. 

 

The Doncaster public transport map

As usual when planning a day out, I looked at the Doncaster public transport map on the Travel South Yorkshire website and was very surprised to discover that Campsall is not even marked on this and that the timetable for the No. 51 bus was yet another one published by the SYMCA that is extremely confusing and without a map. 

 

An extract from the 2024 vesion of the No. 51 bus timetable

 

Using Google Map I had established the location of the various bus stops in Campsall and, on the day, after passing through the run down old coal mining villages of Bentley, Carcroft and Skellow since leaving Doncaster, I arrived at the edge of Burghwallis. 

 

Areas of Doncaster traversed during Church Explorers Week

 

By this time I had traversed a landscape that is underlain by the Permian Edlington Formation, Brotherton Formation and the Roxby Formation, which are overlain by the Triassic Sherwood Sandstone Group - of which only the Brotherton Formation has produced building stone. 

 

The geology between Skellow and Campsall

 

I noted a few old buildings in Skellow, constructed with thinly bedded dolomitic limestone from the Brotherton Formation for the walling with red pantiles used for the roofs, and the same traditional pattern of vernacular materials can also be seen in Sutton. I was then dismayed to discover that the bus then took the most excruciatingly slow route around the houses of Askern, where there isn’t a single listed building. 

 

A few memorials in Campsall Cemetery

Alighting at the Ryecroft Road/The Avenue bus stop, after an hour long journey to cover a distance of 11 km as the crow flies – compared to the 15 minute journey to Brodsworth and the 12 minute journey to Marr over similar direct distances of 7.5 km and 6 km respectively – I had a quick look at the memorials in Campsall Cemetery. 

 

The former boundary wall to the Stony Hills Plantation

Finding only a sandstone war memorial cross, a Portland stone Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone and the memorial to Alfred Stubbs (d.1934), which is made of pink Peterhead and dark grey Rubislaw granites, I just took a few photos and continued down The Avenue, where the wall on the west side once formed the boundary of Stony Hills Plantation. 

 

A detail of the former boundary wall to the Stony Hills Plantation

Along with woodland on the east side of the road, this was cleared in the second half of the C19 and redeveloped for housing. I didn’t have my Estwing hammer with me, but I managed to obtain a specimen of dolomitic limestone. 

 

A specimen of dolomitic limestone

 

This is from a section of thinly bedded walling and is pale cream in colour and extremely fine grained, with no sign of a granular texture or ooliths that are common in the Cadeby Formation, but it does contain very fine grains of black manganese oxide and is quite similar to specimens that I had previously collected from Wadworth and Loversall. 

 

Active and disused quarries marked on the 1854 Ordnance Survey map

Looking at the 1854 Ordnance Survey map of Campsall, several active and disused quarries are marked around the village and limestone for the boundary walls in the village would have no doubt have been obtained from these. 

 

Listed buildings in Campsall

 

Entering the Conservation Area, the first structure on my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge that I had prepared was the Grade II Listed retaining wall to the Old Rectory, which Historic England thinks is probably of an early C19 date. This is listed for its group value only and passes into a long boundary wall that continues down to High Street. 

 

Views of the retaining wall to the Old Rectory

 

The Grade I Listed Old Rectory itself, which dates back to c.1400 and has c.1800 additions, is partly obscured by its high retaining wall and also by trees and shrubs in its garden, but I managed to take a few record photographs. 

 

Views of the Old Rectory

Much of the east elevation that was added c.1800 is rendered, but the north-east gable end, which Pevsner refers to as being the preserved chapel with its church like tracery, and the rest of the T-shaped house is built with limestone ashlar that is quite yellow and was undoubtedly quarried from the Cadeby Formation. 

 

Limestone from the Brotherton Formation in vernacular architecture

 

I have seen outcrops of the Brotherton Formation in a few roadside exposures and in old quarries, where it is predominantly very thinly bedded, but it does have more massive beds up to 200 mm or more thick; however, these are vertically and laterally inconsistent and aren't suitable for ashlar and, as seen in the substantial house to the north of the Old Rectory, it is at best used for roughly coursed and squared walling.

Limestone from the Brotherton Formation in vernacular architecture