Listed Buildings in Burghwallis

 

Burghwallis war memorial 

At the end of a very full day out to Campsall and Burghwallis, to conclude Church Explorers Week, the discovery of the red sandstone at St. Helen's church certainly provided food for thought and, before catching the No. 51 bus back to Doncaster, I completed a very brief Photo Challenge – starting in St. Helen's churchyard. 

 

My Photo Challenge for Burghwallis

 

First on my list was the Grade II Listed Coward family gravestone, commemorating James Coward (d.1780) and his parents Ann (d.1786) and Thomas (d.1794) and has the inscription 'In blooming youth unto this place I code, Readers repent your lot may be the same" beneath a scrolled pediment with roundels. 

 

A detail of the Coward family gravestone

 

Outside the porch are the remains of a stone cross, made from dolomitic limestone from the Cadeby Formation, which is both Grade II Listed and a Scheduled Monument and is thought to date to the late mediaeval period and in its original position. It is also considered to have once had a sundial on the top of the shaft, but this has been replaced with a C20 canopied cross. 

 

The mediaeval cross in St. Helen's churchyard

From St. Helen’s churchyard, I took a few photos of the rear and south-west elevation of the Old Rectory, now converted into three dwellings, which was rebuilt in 1815 by J. P. Pritchett and Charles Watson and is constructed with rendered brick. 

The rear elevation of the Old Rectory

 

On the south-west side of the churchyard is the Grade II* Listed St. Anne’s Rest Home, which Historic England (HE) considers to probably date to the early C16 and was extended in 1797 for George Anne and altered c.1820 for Michael Anne, with later additions. The description further mentions that it is built with Magnesian Limestone rubble masonry. 

 

St. Anne's Rest Home

I could only get a partial view from a distance but, when enlarging the single photo that I took, I can see that the walling is built with very thinly bedded limestone, which is probably locally quarried limestone from the Brotherton Formation, but the quoins and dressings are massive limestone from the Cadeby Formation. 

 

The gatepiers at the entrance to St. Anne's Rest Home

Making my back to Grange Lane, I continued past the entrance to St. Anne’s Rest Home, which has large rusticated massive dolomitic limestone gatepiers and, after noting the location of the bus stop, turned down Old Village Street and carried on to the south end of Well Lane, where I found the Grade II Listed pinfold. 

 

The pinfold on Well Lane

 

Returning to Grange Lane, I completed my Photo Challenge for Burghwallis at the war memorial (1922), which is in the form of a wheel cross and HE describe it as being made of Portland stone, but I didn’t get close enough to confirm this.

Burghwallis war memorial

Red Sandstone in St. Helen's Church III

 

Samples from St. Helen's church in Burghwallis (21 mm diameter coin)

Unless a programme of repairs is undertaken at St. Helen's church in Burghwallis, which requires the renewal of some of the red sandstone, further investigation of its potential provenance using petrographic analysis or even using a hand held X-ray fluorescence spectrometer is unlikely. 

 

The stone library at Sheffield Hallam University

Although I had to undertake stone identification and matching, when working in the building restoration industry in London, and later produced the Triton Stone Library – now in the Redmires Building at Sheffielld Hallam University as part of a slightly larger collection - and often advised Triton Building Restoration Ltd. and have undertaken various projects as a consultant, I have never had access to this equipment and have relied solely on a simple tool kit of a hand lens, bottle of hydrochloric acid, a stainless steel knife and a Wentworth scale. 

 

My tool kit

 

When starting my investigation of mediaeval churches in February 2016, beginning at St. Helen's church in Treeton, I had hoped to reconnect with an interest in standing buildings archaeology, which had been sparked by work at All Saints church in Pontefract. 

 

St. Helen's church in Treeton

Although this never happened in practice and sometimes it seems quite an academic persuit of knowledge, by visiting nearly 150 mediaeval churches and photograph more than 2700 listed buildings in South Yorkshire and the surrounding counties, it has provided me with the type of experience that cannot be achieved in the laboratory.

 

St. John's church in Hooton Roberts

 

By the time I got to St. John's church in Hooton Roberts, I had already visited churches and the historic buildings in Aston, Todwick, Harthill and Whiston and a couple of old quarries on the Rotherham Red variety of the Mexborough Rock and I had seen considerable colour variation, from a typical dull red/purplish colour to mottled yellow/red varieties.

 

The geology around Hooton Roberts

I had passed through this small village very many times, when driving to work from High Green to Doncaster 30 years earlier and on the bus since living in Rotherham and, although I had never stopped to look around, I never doubted that its vernacular architecture is built with Rotherham Red sandstone or the typical light brown/yellowish coloured Mexborough Rock that I got glimpses of at Hooton Quarry and Denaby New Quarry. 

 

Red sandstone on Holmes Lane and nearby houses

It was only when discovering that the outcrops of rock at the top of Holmes Lane and beneath the churchyard wall are actually stongly reddened and that houses on this road and in the immediately vicinity are built with dark plum coloured stone did I start to think more about the geology here. 

 

Mexborough Rock affected by the Don Monocline

Having looked at the geological memoir and updated maps, and seeing that this is marked as the Pennine Upper Coal Measures Formation (PUCMF), I queried this with the British Geological Survey - based on the apparent dip of the roadside outcrops that is in the opposite direction to the dip of the strata affected by the Don Monocline on the south side of the River Don. 

 

Villages in Rotherham set on PUCMF sandstones

Now realising that the reddening of the soil to the north-east of Thrybergh Country Park is due to the arid and highly oxidising environment that affected the underlying PUCMF Wickersley Rock during the Permian Period – my observations of reddened building stones and soils in the fields in Thurcroft, Brampton-en-le-Morthen, Morthen and Wickersley have made me have some doubts about their provenance. 

 

The stratigraphic column showing PUCMF strata

 

While writing this Language of Stone Blog post, I compared small samples of red sandstone from St. Helen's church in Burghwallis to various specimens of Rotherham Red sandstone that I had collected from St. Helen's church in Treeton, quarries at Canklow Woods and West Bawtry Road in Rotherham and a drill core from my own house. 

 

Specimens of red sandstone in my rock collection

In July 2023, when visiting St. Peter's church in Old Edlington, I had assumed that the red/purple sandstone used in its fabric was a further example of Rotherham Red sandstone and I also included a couple of small specimens that I had obtained during a later visit. 

 

St. Peter's church in Old Edlington

The best colour match, as seen with the naked eye, were the specimens from St. Peter's church, which also contains medium grained sand as measured on my Wentworth scale. Looking at the specimens with my hand lens, the sand grains themselves looked slightly pink stained and constitute the bulk of the specimens, they have an open texture and are poorly cemented, with degraded feldspar or iron containing minerals not being obvious. 

 

Specimens from Burghwallis (L) and Old Edlington (R)

In comparison, the Rotherham Red sandstone samples have a red/lilac colour, are fine grained, well cemented and contain a considerable proportion of feldspar, clay minerals and oxidised iron bearing minerals, which collectively gives them quite a different appearance. 

 

Photomicrographs of Rotherham Red sandstone

 

When undertaking a stone matching exercise at St. Helen's church in Treeton, to find an alternative to the now unavailable Rotherham Red sandstone, a friend in Poland was curious about this and arranged for one of her colleagues to undertake a petrographic analysis for me. 

 

A summary of the petrographic analysis

 

Thin sections were prepared from a sample taken from St. Helen's church, the drill core and from the quarry at Canklow Woods. I have no experience of undertaking petrographic analysis but, to my eye, all three appear to be identical and I would therefore be very interested to see how they compare with the stone from St. Helen's church in Burghwallis. 

 

Specimens of PUCMF sandstone obtained from the farm track

 

Looking more closely at rocks that I had collected from Hooton Roberts back in 2016 and 2023, but I had just stored away, specimens that I obtained from the bank of a farm track to the north-east of the village and from the foundations of a house at the top of Holmes Lane, their colours and textures are much closer to the specimens from St. Helen's church in Burghwallis than those of Rotherham Red sandstone. 

 

Specimens of PUCMF sandstone obtained from Holmes Lane

Although this is by no means proof that the stone at Burghwallis was obtained from a quarry in the local PUCMF sandstone, the dull red/purple sandstone that I found at Hooton Roberts and later in old walls, farm buildings, houses and a few small roadside outcrops in Clifton, which is set on the Magnesian Limestone escarpment, demonstrates that the strata immediately beneath the Carboniferous/Permian unconformity can be uniformly reddened, and not just with a mottled red/yellow colouration as seen at St. James' church in High Melton.

 

Red sandstone in Clifton

Red Sandstone in St. Helen's Church II

 

Reddened sandstone in the tower at St. Helen's church

In my last Language of Stone Blog post, I briefly described the red sandstone used in the fabric of St. Helen's church in Burghwallis and the supposition that this incorporates stone from the granary at the Roman Templeborough fort in Rotherham, which was built with the locally distinctive Rotherham Red variety of the Mexborough Rock. 

 

The route of the Roman road to the east of Burghwallis parish

 

Stone is a heavy material and with the logistics of moving it using packhorses, horse/ox drawn carts and sledges being very difficult – even if the existing military roads were still usable after more than 500 years since the Romans withdrew from Britain - and I would like to see the evidence for this, especially since this would have involved the transport of the stone over a distance of more than 30 km. 

 

The Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment

 

The source of a red sandstone near Burghwallis is not obvious and when undertaking the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment (DGA) back in 2007, I surveyed only three exposures of sandstone - Mexborough Rock in the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation (PMCMF), at Denaby Lane and Doncaster Road, and Ackworth Rock in the Pennine Upper Coal Measures Formation (PUCMF) at Harlington Railway Cutting - all of which are light brown in colour.

 

Locations of reddened sandstone identified in the DGA

Apart from Triassic sandstone from the Sherwood Sandstone Group, which underlies most of the eastern part of the borough but does not provide building stone, the only reddened strata that I saw was in the generally yellowish Dalton Rock at Barnburgh Cliff and Cadeby Waste Water Works an isolated block of red sandstone protuding from the ground at Hooton Pagnell and red/purplish sandstone at Hazel Lane Quarry – all of which are immediately below the Carboniferous/Permian unconformity. 

 

Views of reddened PUCMF sandstones

 

For my survey work in the western part of Doncaster, I essentially relied on the 1:50,000 scale Barnsley (Sheet 87) map and the accompanying Barnsley memoir (1947). The information provided by these is actually very limited, with so many of the quarries, railway and road cuttings and miscellaneous exposures having since been infilled, overgrown, developed or in private ownership and therefore inaccessible to the general public. 

 

My geological map of the Barnsley district

 

The descriptions of the Permian strata include details of many sites, without providing grid references, which are still often identifiable when out in the field, but the descriptions of the Coal Measures are much more general and, although there are mentions of reddened sandstones, no precise details of their locations are provided. 

 

My geological memoir for the Barnsley district

 

At St. James' church in High Melton, the chancel and the nave, which the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland suggests may be a survivor of the original Saxon church, contains a considerable amount of reddened and mottled red/yellow sandstone in the rubble walling, which is mixed in with dolomitic limestone from the Cadeby Formation. 

 

The chancel and nave at St. James' church

 

The Barnsley memoir states that "Near Melton Warren, 1,200 yds, N.W. of High Melton, the Dalton Rock is situated immediately below the Lower Magnesian Limestone with which it combines to form a fine escarpment. The rock is often stained red". 

 

A detail of the walling of the nave at St. James' church

 

On the strength of this and the appearance of a quarry on the 1854 Ordnance Survey map to the south of Bath Ponds, which the 2008 edition of sheet 87 marks as being underlain by the Dalton Rock, shows that this formation has been worked for building stone and I have therefore assumed that the sandstone for St. James' church was obtained locally – although I am not implying that the Bath Ponds quarry was the source of the stone.

 

My geological memoir for the Sheffield district

 

The PUCMF sandstones above the Ackworth Rock are actually very variable and poorly exposed and the relationships between the beds marked on the Sheffield (Sheet 100), Barnsley and Wakefield (Sheet 78) maps and described in the were not particularly well understood and partial resurveys, which have been undertaken periodically over the years, have resulted in certain named sandstones being assigned to another formation. 

 

The magazine at Pontefract Castle

This includes the Dalton Rock at Bath Ponds, which very confusingly is named on the GeoIndex Onshore online map viewer as the Newstead Rock (formerly the Pontefract Rock), a sandstone that has some reddening as seen in the Pontefract Castle magazine. 

 

The description of the "unproved south-eastern area"

 

The Wakefield memoir (1940), in its brief description of "The unproved south-eastern area" of the PUCMF that occurs beneath the Cadeby Formation to the north-west of Burghwallis, describes quarries at Badsworth as exposing up to 30 feet of thick-bedded yellow sandstone, often considerably red-stained". 

 

The geological map of the Wakefield district

 

My experience of the geology and building stones of the Wakefield district is quite limited and I have never explored the area where the bedrock geology is composed of the PUCMF; however, Google Street View is a very useful tool that I have used to explore the old part of Badsworth around Main Street and, although I can detect some reddening in the local sandstone, there is nothing like the red sandstone at St. Helen's church to be seen. 

 

Main Street on Google Street View

 

Red Sandstone in St. Helen's Church I

 

Reddened sandstone in the west end of the tower

Walking around St. Helen's church in Burghwallis to take general record photographs of its fabric, before Colin the churchywarden finished his work in the churchyard and showed me its interior, I was struck by the amount of red sandstone that has been used in its fabric. 

 

Views of the church fabric where reddened sandstone has been used

 

As a geologist with a specialist interest in building stones acquired when establishing Triton Building Restoration Ltd. in London back in 1989, I have since surveyed hundreds of geological sites as part of the RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) initiative, visited more than 125 mediaeval churches and have photographed more than 2500 stone built historic buildings, in South Yorkshire and the surrounding counties, and I was therefore intrigued to know where this red sandstone might have come from. 

 

The extent of day trips to photograph historic buildings

 

In Saxon Churches in South Yorkshire, Peter Ryder refers to the use of red sandstone , but Pevsner, the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland and Historic England (HE) make no mention of it. Furthermore, the Building Stones of England edition for West and South Yorkshire and the associated map explorer, based on the Strategic Stone Study co-produced by HE and the British Geological Survey (BGS), is far too generalised and full of errors and omissions – certainly for South Yorkshire – to be of any practical use. 

 

Building Stones of England West and South Yorkshire

When undertaking some online research, I came across an account of St. Helen's church by the local historian Margaret Burns, which states that "The larger blocks of red sandstone used in the plinth and in various areas of the walls would have come either from a deposit of glacial sand and gravel also only a few hundred yards away, or else from an outcrop of ‘Bunter’ sandstone at just under a mile distant". 

 

The geology around Burghwallis

 

When surveying the RIGS in Doncaster in 1997 and resurveying these and additional sites for the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment with the BGS and subsequent work as an independent geologist for Doncaster MBC, I visited many Quaternary sand and gravel pits. Although the oldest parts of the mediaeval churches at Thorne, Hatfield, Fishlake and Kirk Sandal, have used cobbles from these unconsolidated glaciofluvial deposits for walling, they do not produce red sandstone.

 

The stone library at the Redmires Building at Sheffield Hallam University

Similarly, although Triassic red sandstone from the Sherwood Sandstone Group in Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cumbria produces very good quality building stone, which have been included in the Triton Stone Library that is now housed in the Redmires Building at Sheffield Hallam University, the equivalent sandstones to the east of the Pennines from Doncaster to Nottingham are very poorly cemented and not suitable for use as a building stone. 

 

Reddened sandstone at St. James' church in High Melton

 

Not long after I had visited St. Helen's church as part of Church Explorers Week, when I had also seen reddened and mottled red/yellow sandstone used in the nave and chancel of St. James' church in High Melton, I finally got to speak to Peter Robinson from Doncaster Museum about the C12 window head from St. Wilfrid's church in Hickleton, which is on permanent display. 

 

A column from the granary at Templeborough Roman fort

During our conversation on the stone used for various mediaeval churches in Doncaster he mentioned that Paul Buckland had suggested that the red sandstone at St. Helen’s church had been brought from the Roman fort at Templeborough in Rotherham, which was largely destroyed when a steelworks was built on it but parts of the granary were salvaged and are now displayed at the rear of Clifton Park Museum. 

 

Remains from the granary at Templeborough Roman fort in Clifton Park

 

I have never spent any time closely looking at these remains or seen a fresh surface to assess the colour of the sandstone, but I presume that the stone was obtained from a quarry on the escapment of Mexborough Rock that runs south from Rotherham to the east of Moorgate, which I know very well and from which I have obtained several specimens. 

 

The Mexborough Rock around Moorgate

 

The Rotherham Red variety of the Mexborough Rock is quite unusual for its colouration – an explanation of which has been suggested by John Hunter – and the outcrop from Harthill to Rotherham has a dull red/purplish colour when fresh, before oxidising to a brighter  red. 

 

The building sandstones of the British Isles

 

The very bright red colour, however, which is seen in many of the stones at St. Helen's church, is not a characteristic that I associate with Rotherham Red sandstone - which accords with the entry in the BRE publication: The building sandstones of the British Isles by Elaine Leary, where it is named Rotherham Red/Lilac Blue. 

 

Rotherham Red/Lilac Blue in the BRE publication

 

Although I have not seen this in any quarry, many buildings and boundary walls towards the southern end of the outcrop of Rotherham Red sandstone have red/yellow mottling. According to my well thumbed geological memoir (1947), similar colour variations were seen in exposures near Thrybergh that no longer exist and, between Hooton Roberts and Mexborough, it changes to the light brown that is typical of the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation.

 

A geological map of the area between Templeborough and Burghwallis

 

As a geologist, I rely on my observations of the colours, textures and other physical characteristics of stones in buildings, quarries and natural outcrops where possible, using the naked eye and a hand lens. I had hoped to arrange a meeting with both Peter Robinson and Paul Buckland to further discuss this, because I have assumed that they believe that the Anglo-Saxon builders may have made use of the network of Roman roads between Templeborough and Burghwallis

 

The network of Roman roads between Templeborough and Burghwallis

Ryder writes that the builders "happily utilised material from earlier buildings where this was available" and, in Chapter 1 of Stone Quarrying and Building in England AD 43-1525, David Parsons emphasises that the Anglo-Saxons depended heavily on the re-use of stone from demolished pre-existing structures, although being far from universal, but also goes on to say that quarrying had been quite well established by the time of the Norman Conquest.

 

Stone Quarrying and Building in England AD 43-1525

When attending a heritage fair in Rotherham Minster later in the year, a former archivist at Clifton Park Museum suggested that the red sandstone used at All Saints church at Laughton-en-le-Morthen also came from this fort.

 

Views of the north porticus and chancel of All Saints church

 

I first saw All Saints church many years ago and, except for the pilaster on the right hand side of the porticus, I immediately thought that the red/purplish sandstone used is Rotherham Red sandstone, which outcrops just over 3 km away near Todwick, although its vicar Revd. T. Rigby (1903) suggested that the sandstone came from Wickersley.

 

The geology around All Saints church