Stoney Middleton Revisited - Part 2

 

A Stoney Middleton Heritage Trail information board

Continuing along The Bank in Stoney Middleton, I passed the Grade II Listed Old Malt House which, unlike its rendered 5 storied rear elevation, still has exposed stonework that provides another example of Carboniferous Limestone used for walling and Millstone Grit for the dressings.

 

An outcrop of the ELF to the west of Sunnybank

 

On the opposite side of the road, a small outcrop of the Eyam Limestone Formation (ELF) forms the foundation of a garden wall and next to this is Sunnybank which, according to The Move Market website, was built between 1976 and 1982 and has polygonal rubble walling – a very unusual style of masonry that I had seen on the corner of Doncaster Road/Highfield Lane in Conisbrough on my last day out.

 

Sunnybank

 

This house was built before the Stoney Middleton Conservation Area was established in 1987, which would now require the walling to conform to the style of the rest of the houses along The Bank, where the limestone is squared and coursed to various degrees.

 

The house on the corner of The Bank and The Nook

 

Walking further down The Bank, the house on the corner with The Nook caught my eye, where the render on the gable end – as seen on the 2021 version of Google Map – has been removed. It has an architectural style like other buildings of a similar age, which I have seen in Derbyshire, and I am quite surprised that it is not listed.

 

Another view of the house on the corner of The Bank and The Nook

 

I then had a quick look at the various buildings on Mill Street, which include the rear elevations of the Old Malt House and Brook Cottages and the east elevation of the former flour mill that is now occupied by William Lennon & Co, with limestone used for walling and gritstone for dressings – although the rear of Nos 1 and 2 Dale Brook View is built with gritstone, except for the ground floor.

 

Views of the buildings on Mill Street

 

The next building on my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge was the Grade II listed early C19 Brook House on The Nook, which is built with squared and coursed walling with gritstone dressings. This three storied house is clearly of a better quality than the cottages along The Bank, with its moulded doorcase and bracketted stone hood, circular headed first floor window with keystone and canted bay window.

 

Brook House

Next on my list was Denham Cottage and the attached agricultural outbuilding, which Historic England (HE) date to the C17, with C18 and C19 alterations. It is built with quite well coursed and squared gritstone, with the outbuilding retaining its original stone slate roof.

 

Denham Cottage

Dale Brook runs alongside the north elevation of the building and, as where it is seen in other parts of village, its course has been channelled. At Grove Gardens, the now infilled mill pond powered the corn mill and, according to the Stoney Middle Heritage Centre website, was diverted to a waterwheel that powered bellows used for lead smelting.

 

The outbuilding at Denham Cottages

Continuing along The Nook past St. Martin’s church, on the left hand side before the road turns sharply to the east, there is an old well with a gritstone bowl, which is the site of the main well dressing in Stoney Middleton.

 

The well on The Nook

 

Further along The Nook, I then came to a structure locally known as the Roman Bath House, but the attached plaque states that there is no evidence of a Roman building being established here, with it most likely to have been built C.1815 by Lord Denman, who was the owner of the nearby Stoney Middleton Hall.

The Roman Bath House

 

Immediately next to the Roman Bath House is a natural spring that the geological map shows is on the junction of the flat reef facies of the ELF and the shales of the Bowland Shale Formation, which forms the lowest part of the Millstone Grit Group.

 

The spring

 

This spring, which fed the bath house with water that has a consistent temperature of 18 degrees centigrade, is marked on the 1897 25 inch OS map as Mineral Tepid Spring. Presumably, a pipe tapped the water from the spring to take it to the bath house, as the well established course of the spring is from north to south and passes through the boundary wall to a drain on The Nook.

 

The spring and drain at The Nook

Just beyond the spring, I was interested to see that the pair of semi-detached houses, which appear on the 1922 OS map, are built with a gritstone that is distinctly reddened. This colouration is not a feature of any of the gritstone walling or dressings that I had so far seen in the village.

 

Semi-detached houses built with reddened gritstone

I then set off up the track to the extension to St. Martin’s churchyard, where I had identified the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstones of Serjeant A.J. Jerram of the Grenadier Guards and Driver T.G. Pinder of the Royal Engineers.

 

A view of the extension to St. Martin's churchyard

Stancliffe Darley Dale stone has been used for the former and limestone for the latter, but I didn’t examine the limestone closely and I can’t tell from my photos if it is Portland stone or Hopton Wood limestone, which are the English limestones used for CWGC headstones.

 

The headstone of Serjeant A.J. Jerram

I am much more familiar with Portland stone, as seen in many historic buildings and hundreds of CWGC headstones, but its texture and distribution of shell fragments doesn’t look typical. At the cemeteries in Staveley and Brimington, headstones where I initially thought Portland stone is used are in fact made with Hopton Wood limestone, which I realised when seeing crinoids in enlarged my photos, but I don’t see these on this headstone.

 

The headstone of driver T.G. Pinder