St. Bartholomew's Church - The Exterior

 

A general view from the south-east

When preparing my day out to Old Whittington, I was interested to discover that the Grade II listed St. Bartholomew’s church was opened for the general public and that a local historian would be in attendance, with access to various books and other information about its history. 

 

A view of the tower

 

Pevsner describes it as “1896 by E.R. Rollinson. Stone with a spire”, with Historic England stating the materials used as “Coursed rock-faced gritstone with freestone dressings, slate roof”, with it being in the Decorated style and that it was built on the site of an earlier church. The rest of its description is in the usual very dry style, with a lack of paragraphs, which is not very easy for a layman to understand. 

 

A drawing of the church in 1785 by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm

 

The church website, however, is very comprehensive and from this I learned that the tower dates to 1863 and it was all that remained after a fire had burned the church down in 1895. The earlier church had itself replaced the Norman church (c.1140), which was sited several metres to the south of the current building and its position is marked by two yew trees. 

 

Quarries at Wingerworth

Also, the 1863 church is described as being built with stone from Wingerworth, where the Building Stones Database for England map explorer shows Birdholme Quarry and Sutcliffe Quarry on the Deep Hard Rock and the Bolehill Quarry on the Wingfield Flags. 

 

Wingfield Flags used for walling in the tower

The sandstone used for most of the listed buildings and other historic architecture in Old Whittington is a massive medium grained sandstone, which is generally cross-bedded and has a very high iron content, which produces Liesegang rings and strong orange colouration. Although I did not see any exposures, the quarries in the area worked the Deep Hard Rock and I have assumed that this stone was used in the village. 

 

The upper part of the tower

I didn’t examine the stone closely, but I could immediately see that the walling stone of the tower has a very different character to the presumed Deep Hard Rock. It is plane bedded and is laid in thin courses and, to my eye, has a greenish colour, which I have seen in the Greenmoor Rock in Sheffield  and at the type locality of Green Moor. 

 

Rock-faced Wingfield Flags sandstone used for the walling

In The Building sandstones of the British Isles, published by the Building Research Establishment, the Delph sandstone from the now disused Bolehill Quarry is described as dark buff or dark green/grey in colour. Petrographic analyses of this stone, as published in the geological memoir, refer to a matrix that largely consists of chlorite and this also appears in the Greenmoor Rock which, together with the Grenoside Sandstone, are the northern equivalent of the Wingfield Flags. 

 

Pink sandstone used for the window dressings

I walked anticlockwise around the exterior and noted that the windows have dressings made of a pink medium grained sandstone, which was probably quarried from the Corbar Grit (Ashover Grit) alongside the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire. Where used in the Sheffield Board Schools at Ranmoor, Western Road and Pomona Street by the architects Holmes and Watson, this pink gritstone is described as Matlock stone.

 

Plane bedded Wingfield Flags used for walling

 

The rock-faced thinly coursed walling stone used for the rebuilt church is fine grained and has the same plane bedding and greenish colour, which suggests that this has again been obtained from the same quarry at Wingerworth. 

 

Massive sandstone used in the east elevation of the chancel

 

Moving around to the east end of the chancel, I was therefore very surprised to see that the lower courses are much larger and very irregular in size and shape and the sandstone used is medium/coarse grained, cross-bedded and rich in iron. 

 

A detail of the sandstone used for the lower courses of the chancel

 

I was more interested in the stone used for the very weathered head-stops and the hood mouldings, which I first thought was dolomitic limestone from the Cadeby Formation, as Old Whittington is less than 10 km away from the Magnesian Limestone escarpment. 

 

Head-stops on the north elevation

 

Using my hand lens and applying a drop of hydrochoric acid to the head-stops that I could reach on the west end, I realised that it is a Jurassic oolitic limestone and, when enlarging photographs of a couple of these, I could see that the limestone is predominantly composed of ooliths. 

 

A head-stop with the enlargement showing ooliths

 

I have seen many of these limestones over the years, including Bath stone, Portland stone, Ancaster stone and Clipsham stone and all of these contain fragments of fossil shells to a varying extent and the only limestone that is essentially composed of ooliths is Ketton stone from Rutland. 

 

A head-stop carved from predominantly oolitic limestone

Although I included this limestone in the Triton Stone Library, which is now housed in the Redmires Building at Sheffield Hallam University I have only seen it used in a building at St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Leeds and for the dressings at the Ketton Cement Store of Thos. W. Ward on Attercliffe Road in Sheffield. 

 

A winged lion

I only spent 20 minutes taking general record photographs of the exterior and I will take another look at the various stones used in its construction, and I finished my quick look at the exterior by taking a few photos of the stone carvings on the tower, which include a winged lion and an angel.

 

An angel