Outcrops of Red Sandstone in Clifton

 

An outcrop of red sandstone on the west side of Common Lane

After spending not long over an hour walking around the village of Clifton, to have a good look at the building stones that have been used in its historic architecture, I returned to Common Lane and set off down the hill on my way to Conisbrough. 

 

Red sandstone on the west side of Common Lane

Just before I left the village, with the high boundary wall of the former Beech House Farm to my right, I was very interested to see a small outcrop of red sandstone projecting from the base of the garden wall on the opposite side of the road. 

 

An outcrop of sandstone on the east side of Common Lane

 

Also, another small section of sandstone forms the foundations of a low retaining wall on the east side of Common Lane, a part of which has been covered with concrete to presumably fill a void and provide some structural stability to the wall.

 

Flaggy sandstone

To the north of this band of concrete the upper part of the section is seen to comprise very thinly bedded flaggy sandstone and, although I didn’t have my Estwing hammer with me, I managed to pull a loose piece of this from the outcrop with my hands. 

 

A piece of flaggy sandstone

 

Although the section is being encroached upon by ivy and is likely to be completely overgrown in the not too distant future, just beyond the flaggy sandstone it was still possible to see that this is underlain by a more massive sandstone, which displays cross-bedding. 

 

Massive cross-bedded sandstone

Lying between the retaining wall and the boundary wall to the former Beech Hall Farm, pieces of the sandstone had been left in a small pile and I took one of these. The specimens that I collected are both fine grained and the red/purplish colour is consistent with the blocks that I had seen scattered amongst the dolomitic limestone walls throughout the village. 

 

A  specimen of red sandstone

 

Looking at the geological map of the area, these small outcrops form part of an unnamed Pennine Upper Coal Measures Formation (PUCMF) sandstone that crosses Common Lane and which is displaced by a NNE/SSE trending fault. 

 

The geological map showing PUCMF sandstones near Clifton

When I first visited St. Peter’s church in Old Edlington, I looked at the old Ordnance Survey maps and found a few quarries in the area that were located on the Cadeby Formation, but I could not see any quarries on the unnamed PUCMF sandstones that form small outcrops in the area.

A vertical section of the sandstones above the PUCMF Ravenfield Rock

Page 93 of the geological memoir for the Barnsley district refers to red beds that have been seen in PUCMF sandstones in the area around Micklebring, Clifton and Crookhill Park, without providing any precise details of their locations.

 

A brief description of red beds in the geological memoir

Looking at the LIDAR map, the area around Crookhill Park and Old Edlington show obvious signs of quarrying, which coincide with the position of quarries marked on the OS maps. They are found very near to the unconformity between Carboniferous and Permian strata and the OS map marks them as limestone quarries. 

 

Crookhill Park on the LIDAR map

To the west of St. Peter’s church in Old Edlington, an unnamed PUCMF sandstones appears to immediately underlie the Cadeby Formation. Given that Clifton’s historic buildings contain a small proportion of red sandstone, it is possible that the Edlington quarry cut down into the underlying red sandstone, which may then have been used with limestone in the immediate area.

A LIDAR map view of the Edlington quarry