Wensley Road in Winster

 

The Market Hall in Winster

After a period of inactivity following my day out to Headingley, which was quite unusual for me during the summer months, I set out 4 weeks later to Winster, which I had passed through on the No. 172 bus from Darley Dale when exploring Rowtor Rocks, Birchover, Stanton Moor and Stanton-in-Peak in May 2024 and was quite struck by the architecture on Main Street. 

 

A Google Map view showing the main roads from Treeton to Winster

The 53 buildings that appeared on my Photo Challenge are set in an area that measures no more than 400 m by 400 m and, having ‘walked’ around Winster using Google Street View and worked out the logistics involved in the bus travel, I planned to arrive at 13:08 pm. On my return journey, I would then catch either the 15:28 pm bus to Darley Dale and take one of the Sixes or Transpeak services – or return directly to Bakewell on the No.172 service at 16:13.

 

My Photo Challenge for Winster

Arriving in Winster on time, I was surprised to discover that the Main Street was full of people and traffic, which I soon learned was because the very popular annual Winster Secret Gardens event was taking place over the weekend. 

 

The Old Forge

 

The first building on my list was the Old Forge on Wensley Road, a C18 double fronted cottage that has Carboniferous limestone rubble walling, reddened gritstone from the Ashover Grit for the dressings and a Welsh slate roof – materials that are also used for the adjoining late C18 three-storey Vernon House, which was not part of my Photo Challenge. 

 

Vernon House

 

When living in Bakewell and undertaking a survey of the RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) in the Peak District National Park, I travelled widely across Derbyshire but I didn’t visit Winster and wasn’t aware of its lead mining industry, which exploited the many lead rakes that exist in this part of the county. 

 

The British Geological Survey map of the area around Winster

 

The lead mining industry in Winster, which may date back to Roman times, reached its peak in the mid C18 but most of the lead mines had closed by the end of the century, by which time the population had trebled. Winster had become very prosperous and one of the largest towns in Derbyshire, but flooding in the mines became a problem as the workings went deeper and most of them had closed by the C19. 

 

Lansdowne House and Georgic House

 

Lansdowne House and Georgic House on the opposite side of the road provide evidence of the prosperity during the mid C18, with the buff/red gritstone ashlar, Venetian windows and Doric columns and entablatures to the doorways reflecting the social status of the owners. 

 

Archway House

Historic England describe the adjacent Archway House (1754) as being built of coarse squared gritstone and the stone for the walling and dressings is predominantly buff coloured. The quarries at Darley Dale and Stanton Moor produce stone of this colour, although the latter does produce mottled buff/red sandstone and at the Birchover and Wattscliffe quarries, which are less than 2.5 km away as the crow flies, reddening is predominant. 

 

 Quarries marked on the Building Stones Database for England map explorer

 

A little further along Wensley Road, Dale Cottage and Tite Cottage are a couple of mid C18 semi-detached cottages, which are built with Carboniferous limestone walling, which varies from a light grey to light yellow/brown colour, with red massive gritstone dressings and Welsh slate roofs. 

 

Dale Cottage

 

The British Geological Survey map shows that Winster is set on the junction of the Lower Carboniferous Widmerpool Formation and the Edale Limestone Formation, which along with the underlying Monsal Dale Limestone Formation, was dolomitized at the end of the Upper Carboniferous subperiod but, except for a couple of lime kilns marked on the 1851 Ordnance Survey map, I can’t see any quarries where the limestone may have come from. 

 

Tite Cottage

On the opposite of the road is another pair of late C18 cottages, now named Carpenters Cottage, which provides a further example of Carboniferous limestone rubble walling, red gritstone dressings and a Welsh slate roof, but only listed for its group value, and a little further along the south side of Wensley Road is Roselea Cottage, which is built with similar materials. 

 

Carpenters Cottage and Roselea Cottage

Next to Roselea Cottage is the Grade II* Listed Market Hall, which is owned by the National Trust and was originally built in the C16 with later remodelling during the C18. The ground floor has five broad arches in a red gritstone wall that have been mostly infilled and, quite unusually for the Peak District, the upper level is built with red brick.

 

The Market Hall

Headingley Lane to Woodhouse Cliff

 

Rose Court

Returning to the south end of Grosvenor Road, having a good walk around Headingley Hill to photograph its listed buildings as best as I could, I arrived at the back of Nos. 42 and 44 Headingley Lane Lane (c.1840), where the rear elevation of this pair of semi-detached houses is made of brick and, diverting down the back lane, I noted that the rear of Nos. 38 and 40 (c.1840) is built with yellowish sandstone from the Elland Flags. 

 

The rear elevations of Nos. 38-44 Headingley Lane

The side and front elevations of these substantial double fronted houses, however, are built with large blocks of gritstone ashlar that are most likely to have been quarried from the Rough Rock, which I had encountered in very many of the listed buildings seen on my walk to date. 

 

The front elevations of Nos. 38-44 Headingley Lane

On the south side of Headingley Lane is Rose Court (c.1842), which Historic England (HE) suggest may have been designed by John Clark, the architect and speculative developer who was responsible for several houses built at Headingley Hill, and it may have been built for the banker George Smith and was later owned by Leeds High School for Girls from 1912 until they vacated the premises in 2008. 

 

Rose Court and its gate piers

After taking a few general record photos of the north elevation to show the porte cochère on 4 Tuscan columns and the large rusticated gritstone gate piers, which are separately Grade II listed, I continued along Headingley Lane to the junction with Victoria Road. 

 

Nos. 3 to 7 Victoria Road

Nos. 3 to 7 Victoria Road (c.1842) are a short terrace of houses, built with gritstone ashlar with Welsh slate roofs that appear on the 1851 Ordnance Survey map in an essentially rural area, which the 1908 edition shows was subsequently developed with terraced housing to form the Hyde Park district of Leeds. 

 

A detail of the 1851 OS map

 

Although it doesn't appear on the 1851 OS map - surveyed 5 years after Rose Court was built - at the south-east corner of its grounds there is a gritstone ashlar built lodge that is marked on the 1895 edition, but its very simple style doesn't give many clues to its date. 

 

The former lodge to Rose Court

 

Nos. 27 and 29 (c.1840) are a pair of substantial gritstone semi-detached houses opposite the south entrance to Rose Court, which HE suggest could also be also designed by John Clark and describe them as being of a similar style - which I presume refers to the recessed entrance with columns in antis. 

 

Nos. 27 and 29 Victoria Road

Continuing along Victoria Road, the Bethel First United Church of Jesus Christ (1886) was the next building on my Photo Challenge. According to the My Methodist Church website, the architect was Mr W.S. Braithwaite of South Parade in Leeds.

 

The Bethel First United Church of Jesus Christ

 

Taking a few photos from a distance to get the tall spire in view, I didn't take much notice of the sandstones that have been used in construction and on my way to the brick built No. 63 Victoria Road (1838), which has no interest to this Language of Stone Blog, the unlisted lodge to the now demolished Morley House caught my eye. 

 

The former lodge to Morley House

On my way back to to the junction of Victoria Road with Headingley Lane, I stopped briefly to take a quick look at the door surround of the Bethel First United Church, where the stone used for the tracery looks quite different to the Elland Flags walling and the Rough Rock dressings. 

 

The door surround of the Bethel First United Church

The Church of St. Augustine at Wrangthorn on Hyde Park Road (1871), by James Barlow Fraser, was not part of my Photo Challenge but I stopped to take a general record photo that shows its fine tower and another combination of Elland Flags for walling and Rough Rock for the dresssings. 

 

The tower at St. Augustine's church

 

The bronze statue of Robert Peel (1852) by William Behnes is described by HE as being set on a pink granite pedestal with a stepped grey granite base, but I didn't get close enough to see what granites have been used and assume that the pink granite is from Peterhead. 

 

The Robert Peel monument

 

Moving on to the Post Office and Hyde Park Delivery Office (1906) on Woodhouse Street, which is designed in the Baroque Revival style, the splay is largely built with medium grained sandstone that looks more like Bolton Woods sandstone or Huddersfield stone than the Elland flags or Rough Rock that I had seen on my walk, but I only took photos from a distance. 

 

The Hyde Park post office and delivery office

 

I concluded my Photo Challenge and a walk of nearly 10 km at the early C19 Nos. 1 and 2 Woodhouse Cliff, where yellowish sandstone from the Elland Flags is once again the principal building stone, alhough I could only get a partial view of the terrace over a substantial garden wall.

Nos. 1 and 2 Woodhouse Cliff

 

An Exploration of Headingley Hill - Part 2

 

A detail of the entrance to the Headingley Reformed Methodist church

Continuing my exploration of Headingley Hill, while undertaking a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, the next building on my list was No. 1 Ashwood Villas (1870), a pair of semi-detached houses built in a Gothic Revival style using sandstone from the Elland Flags for the rock-faced walling and coarse grained Rough Rock for the dressings. 

 

No. 1 Ashwood Villas

 

By the time that the 1851 Ordnance Survey (OS) map was published, the development of Headingley was mainly restricted to plots strung along Headingley Lane but, in the later Victorian period, most of the building took place on its north side up to Woodhouse Cliff, principally along Cumberland Road and Grosvenor Road as marked on the 1893 OS map. 

 

Headingley Hill on the 1893 OS map

 

The next building on my list to photograph was the former Headingley United Reformed church, with its walls and gate piers (1864), designed in the Gothic Revival style by Cuthbert Brodrick, who designed Ashfield (c.1860) on Grove Road, but was best known for Leeds Town Hall (1858), Leeds Corn Exchange (1863) and Leeds City Museum (1868). 

 

Headingley United Reformed church

The by now familiar pattern of Elland Flags sandstone for walling and Rough Rock for the dressings is again seen here, but I was more interested in the dull red sandstone used for the columns to the south door and which I immediately considered to be Red Mansfield dolomitic sandstone – a long since unavailable stone that was widely distributed across England following the growth of the railway network. 

 

Red sandstone columns in the south door

 

To form the columns, the sandstone has been laid edge bedded and one of these had spalled, which enabled me to collect a few specimens of stone that had become detached. When I examined them with my hand lens, I could see that it is very fine grained and looks quite different to the Permo-Triassic sandstones, which tend to be medium grained and a much brighter red. 

 

Specimens of stone from the south door

I continued up Cumberland Road and just got glimpses of the rear of Nos. 1-5 Headingley Terrace, its attached garden studio and gate piers and the semi-detached houses forming part of Devonshire Hall but, although I took a few record photos for the purpose of my Photo Challenge, I can't say too much about them. 

 

Spring Hill

 

Spring Hill (1846) is a Gothic Revival house by Thomas Shaw and, although I didn't try and take a close up photo of them, each gable has its apex adorned by a heraldic beast. Elland Flags sandstone for the walling and Rough Rock for the dressings are again the favoured building materials, which are also used for its coach house and stables. 

 

The coach house and stables to the north of Spring Hill

 

On the opposite side of the road is the mid C19 gatehouse to Devonshire Hall, surrounded on each side by a cottage, which are built with large blocks of massive sandstone from the Elland Flags with a tooled finish. Gritstone is used for the dressings and the parapet, which is pierced with alternate large and small roundels. 

 

The gatehouse to Devonshire Hall

 

From the gateway, I got a a distant view of Devonshire Hall (1928), which was designed in the C17 Scottish Baronial style by J.C. Proctor and F.L. Charlton as a hall of residence for the University of Leeds. The walls are rendered, but stonework is exposed in the snecked masonry to the ground floor, the oriel that rises to the clock tower, the crenellated parapet and the dressings.

 

The central block of Devonshire Hall

Yellowish sandstone from the Elland Flags, with Rough Rock dressings, is again used for the Tudor Revival style Cumberland Priory (c.1840), another speculative development by John Child at Headingley Hill, which has its boundary wall and gate piers separately listed. 

 

Cumberland Priory

At the end of Cumberland Road, I could only catch a glimpse of the west elevation of Ridgeway House (1848), built for the linen yarn draper Mr Blackett, which is built in gritstone with a rusticated/rock-faced ground floor and ashlar for the upper storeys. 

 

Ridgeway House

 

Its substantial coach house and stables, which is now converted into the residential Ridgeway Cottage, is built with sandstone from the Elland Flags, which would suggest that the transport costs of the Rough Rock from the Meanwood and Weetwood quarries limit its use to dressings and the higher quality buildings. 

 

Ridgeway Cottage

 

Making my way back down Cumberland Road, I found the archway in the boundary wall that forms the entrance to a snicket, which preserves the public right of way that existed before the land was sold off for development and, together with the boundary walls and gate piers on Grosvenor Road, is Grade II listed. 

 

The snicket to Grosvenor Road

Arriving on Grosvenor Road, I took a quick snap of Hilly Ridge House (1839) and its gate piers and railings, before walking down the road to photograph the boundary wall to the west of Grosvenor Terrace (1845) and the rear elevation of the houses that I could see. 

 

The rear elevation of Grosvenor Terrace

Passing Elmfield (1846), another house by Thomas Shaw that I could only partially see behind a high garden wall, I took a few photos of Nos. 1 to 3 Grosvenor Mount and its separately listed boundary walls, which are again built with yellowish sandstone from the Elland Flags. 

 

Grosvenor Mount

 

The character of the streetscape in this part of Headingley appears to mark the beginning of a change from large detached and semi-detached villas set in substantial plots, which were owned by wealthy businessmen to, to more densely built terraced housing targetted at a lower social class that desired to live in this affluent suburb. 

 

Grosvenor House

 

Taking a photo of Grosvenor House, where only its separately listed railings and garden wall were were part of my Photo Challenge, I carried on down Grosvenor Road past the site of a quarry that was marked as still active on the 1851 OS map. The 1893 OS map shows that it was incorporated into the garden of Grosvenor House, but since the 1970s has been used as a communal garden known as Dagmar Wood. 

 

Grosvenor Road on the 1851 OS map