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| A restored head stop on the south aisle |
Continuing my brief look at the exterior of Halifax Minster, which is built with coarse grained Rough Rock, I stopped to photograph the very weathered grotesque on the south-east corner before continuing along the south aisle of the chancel.
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| A grotesque on the south-east corner of the chancel |
Looking at the windows and the acanthus leaf like decorations to the parapet of the 5-bay chancel, it appears that this and the Rokeby Chapel were built during the same phase of building c.1533. At its west end, there is a rose window that has a hood mould with head stops in the form of ram’s heads, which have been restored with a uniformly coloured medium grained gritstone.
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| The rose window at the west end of the south aisle of the chancel |
Along the parapet to the chancel, the blocks beneath the crocketted pinnacles, hood moulds to windows, mullions and isolated blocks have also been recently restored with a similar medium grained sandstone, which is quite consistent with the Crosland Hill stone supplied from the Rough Rock at Huddersfield, but this is only an educated guess.
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| A head stop on the south aisle of the chancel |
Immediately below the cinquefoiled blocks that form part of the ornate parapet, the moulding is carved with various details that include an angel, faces, grotesques, rosettes, floral details and shields but, in their usual way, Historic England (HE) make no mention of these interesting examples of architectural sculpture.
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| An angel on the south aisle of the chancel |
From my photos, I can see that the gritstone used for the fabric is much coarser than the sandstone used for restoration and small quartz pebbles are frequent, which limits the carving to crudely carved features. This texture is quite typical of the Rough Rock in West Yorkshire, although the variety produced at Crosland Hill is fine to medium grained and an exception to the rule.
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| A detail on the south aisle of the chancel |
Moving on to the Holdsworth Chapel, which the Medieval Churches of West Yorkshire by Peter Ryder dates to c.1554, I was very interested to see that the 'flying buttresses' are very similar to those seen at All Saints church in Silkstone and St. Mary’s church in Ecclesfield.
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| The buttresses on the Rokeby Chapel |
When visiting various mediaeval churches that have elaborately carved C12 corbel tables, I have often wondered if they were produced by itinerant masons similar to the Herefordshire School, because the figures looked so similar, and I thought perhaps that there was a connection between the churches at Halifax, Silkstone and Ecclesfield.
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| A buttress on the Rokeby Chapel |
All Saints church in Silkstone is one of five sister churches that share very similar designs, which includes those at Darton, Royston, Cawthorne and the now rebuilt High Hoyland but all of these, except Darton, were completed by 1500 - as was St. Mary’s in Ecclesfield.
Continuing past the south porch and taking a photo along the south elevation to the east, the west end of the south aisle has a castellated parapet in the same style as the Holdsworth Chapel, with both the ground floor windows and those above having a very late Perpendicular Gothic style that have very simple tracery or it is absent.
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| A view of the south elevation |
Moving round to the west elevation of the four stage tower, which I couldn’t get far enough away from to photograph in its entirety, it is dominated by the very large Perpendicular Gothic style window but my Panasonic Lumix TZ100 camera was able to zoom into the high level gargoyles.
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| The west elevation of the tower |
Above the west door, there are two highly weathered coats of arms, which are quite crudely carved into the very coarse grained Rough Rock and the finer grained beds are differentially weathered, which highlights the large scale cross-bedding.
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| Coats of arms above the west door of the door |
Moving back to the west end of the south aisle, the blackened stone work has been sufficiently weathered to expose a fresh surface of the Rough Rock, which here is coarse grained and contains the occasional small quartz pebble.
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| A detail of the Rough Rock |
Attached to the wall above this is a sundial with a date 1808, which is not mentioned in the HE listing description. The inscription, cut into a slab of Elland Flags sandstone, records the names of the churchwardens - William Lawrence, Jonathan Illingworth, Robert Abbott and John Sutcliffe.
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| The sundial |
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