Preparing a Day Out to Headingley

 

The distribution of quarries in the vicinity of Headingley village

Following on from another very enjoyable field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, which finished by making some observations of the archaeological dig at Sheldon, my next day out was to explore the affluent suburb of Headingley in Leeds. 

 

An aerial view of Headingley

 

I first visited Headingley more than 40 years ago to visit a girlfriend, and have since stayed in a B&B a few times when taking my Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors exams, attended a cricket match against South Africa, passed through it on the bus when visiting the Church of St. John the Baptist in Adel and most recently as a passenger in a car when co-leading another field trip to Otley Chevin. 

 

The British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Headingley

 

As with most of my days out on the buses and trains from Treeton, I entered a postcode for a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, which highlighted 100 listed buildings that would entail a walk of nearly 10 km – based on a route that I devised using Google Map. 

 

My planned route to complete the Photo Challenge for Headingley

Undertaking more detailed planning with Google Street View, I noted that very many of the listed buildings on my list to photograph are surrounded by large leafy gardens or are set back from the road, where I could only get glimpses of the fabric from the public thoroughfare. 

 

The geology around Headingley

 

Looking at the geological map, except for the Stanningley Rock that underlies Far Headingley and the area to the east, which was not part of my exploration of this area of Leeds, most of my route was set on the Elland Flags, a Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation sandstone.

 

An extract from the geological memoir

 

The geological memoir for Leeds (1950) makes only very brief reference to the sandstones in the district that have been used as a building stone – the Lower Follifoot Grit and the Rough Rock from the Millstone Grit Group and the Elland Flags. 

 

The description of the Rough Rock in the geological memoir

 

The descriptions of these sandstone formations in the geological memoir are again extremely brief and don’t mention their physical characteristics in detail, but I had seen the very coarse grained and often pebbly Rough Rock at an old quarry in Roundhay Park and as a building stone at Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds Minster, Leeds City Museum, the Corn Exchange and various other historic buildings in Leeds city centre. 

 

The description of the Elland Flags in the geological memoir

Except for a small exposure in Roundhay Park, I have never seen an outcrop of the Elland Flags, although I have been aware of its reputation as a paving stone and, as particularly seen in the area around Pudsey, its widespread local use for roofing. Although typically fine grained and thinly bedded, it does contain massive medium grained beds that are suitable for ashlar. 

 

The Building Stones Heritage of Leeds

Although mainly based on Leeds city centre, The Building Stones Heritage of Leeds (1996) by Francis G. Dimes and Murray Mitchell, mentions that the columns of the arcades at Leeds Minster and the original stone at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, as well as other buildings, are built with sandstone from the Elland Flags. 

 

Sandstones and quarries in the Leeds area

 

This excellent and well researched publication provides a lot of useful information of the various sandstones used for the historic buildings in Leeds, including those that were brought in from much further afield – from near Bradford and Derbyshire – once the railways came to Leeds. 

 

The route of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway (blue)

 

Headingley station on the Leeds and Thirsk Railway opened in 1849 and, as shown on the Building Stones Database for England map explorer, the Rough Rock was quarried extensively along the Meanwood Valley and the Elland Flags was worked at Woodhouse – both of which are within 2 km of the centre of the old village – and I therefore expected to see that these have been exclusively used for all of the buildings marked on the 1851 Ordnance Survey map. 

 

Old quarries in the vicinity of Headingley