Dewsbury Minster - The Interior

 

Saxon sculpture in the Heritage Centre

When walking around the exterior of Dewsbury Minster, I just took a few general record photographs from a distance, with trees obscuring the view of the north elevation, and I didn’t spend any time at looking at the east end of the church, which was added with transepts and the chancel, chapel and vestry from 1884 to 1887. 

 

The stairs to the community hall on the mezzanine

 

Entering the church by the entrance porch on its north side, I was very surprised to discover that the east end of the church has been extensively reordered, to incorporate a refectory, kitchen, crèche, a community hall and a heritage centre, with further meeting space and an office on the upper mezzanine floor. 

 

The plan of Dewsbury Minster in the Heritage Tour leaflet

On the day I visited, various events were taking place in the community spaces and I therefore didn’t get an opportunity to explore the east end of the church or have a look at the stone that it has been used it build it. Having picked up a very comprehensive Dewsbury Minster Heritage Tour leaflet, I entered the nave, which has also been reordered quite recently, where I was very interested to see the very unusual north arcade. 

 

The north arcade

 

The arcade is dated c.1220 and the Historic England listing describes it as consisting of piers, around which are four detached colonnettes connected by annulets. The south arcade is dated to the later part of the C13 and its Decorated Gothic style quatrefoil piers have complex capitals. 

 

The south arcade

 

Looking from the exterior, I couldn’t get a good view of the clerestory but, looking at the masonry above the aisles, there seems to be no change in its pattern, which is usually an indication that the nave has been raised. Although slightly dirty, the sandstone doesn’t seem to have the same orange colour variation as that used for the C18 tower and north aisle. 

 

The clerestory above the south arcade

 

Although there is no mention of this by Pevsner, the Historic England listing description and other sources, which I referred to when undertaking some preliminary research when planning, the Heritage Tour leaflet states that the masonry between the two easternmost arches of the north arcade is part of the north-east corner of the original Saxon Minster, with a date of 980. 

 

Supposed Saxon masonry in the north arcade

 

After looking at the excellent Threads of Survival exhibition, which was quite unexpected, I went to have a quick look around the Heritage Centre, where there are several high quality information panels that inform the visitor about the Christian history of Dewsbury. 

 

A view of the Heritage Centre

 

The Heritage Centre contains fragments of the Paulinus Cross (AD 850), a reproduction of the cross, other fragments of Saxon sculpture, various grave slabs, a C10 Nordic style hogback grave cover and a late C12 De Soothhill grave slab, which is stylised with dragons and eagles. 

 

The De Soothill grave slab

 

The exhibition of ancient artefacts is as good as those that I have seen in many regional museums and, if wasn’t for the fact that I already spent an hour looking round the exterior and interior, I would have spent more time at Dewsbury Minster, but I had 32 buildings that I wanted to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website.

 

A C10 Nordic style hogback grave cover

 

Dewsbury Minster - The Exterior

 

Dewsbury Minster

At the end of the week commencing 18th July 2022, having had a day out with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group and been invited to see the interior of Catcliffe Glass Cone, I had a day out to Dewsbury, an old mill town with ancient origins, which I had briefly visited several years earlier when developing my Glowing Edges Designs. 

 

Dewsbury Minster

Having arrived on the bus from Wakefield, I immediately set off to Dewsbury Minster and, when approaching the north elevation, I could clearly see that the sandstones used for the tower and north aisle by John Carr (1767) and the eastern extension and clerestory (1884-87) by A.E. Street and A.H. Kirk, in a Decorated Gothic style, are very different. 

 

The tower

 

The C18 masonry is built with an iron stained sandstone that, although not possessing well defined banding and Liesegang rings, is variegated with buff to orange colouration within a single block of stone – a pattern that I can’t recall seeing before in the Coal Measures sandstones during my travels around South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and West Yorkshire. 

 

The tower and south aisle

 

This strongly contrasts with the generally uniform buff colour of the stone that has been used for the south aisle (1895), which replaced the original south aisle that was added by Carr. Looking closely at my photographs of the masonry in the tower and north aisle, I can see that clay ironstone pebbles are quite common. 

 

The north aisle

 

Having only been in Dewsbury for less than 10 minutes, I hadn’t been able to get a feel for the physical characteristics of the stone used in its historic buildings and, with Dewsbury Minster being built before the Calder and Hebble Navigation was finished, I assume that this sandstone had been quarried locally. 

 

The geology around Dewsbury

 

According to the section on economic geology in the geological memoir (1930), the Thornhill Rock from the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation is one of the most important sandstones in the Coal Measures and is still being quarried on a large scale to the north of Dewsbury. 

 

The distribution of quarries around Dewsbury

The memoir further states that in Morley, where the quarries are less than 5 km away, the Thornhill Rock constitutes an excellent freestone, with the Building Stones Database for England map also showing a concentration of quarries in the area. 

 

The north transept

 

Walking quickly around the Minster, it appears that the sandstone used for the major phase of rebuilding is very similar to the one used for the south aisle, but I only took a few general record photographs and didn’t closely examine the stone. 

 

The east end

By the mid C19, several railways had been established in West Yorkshire to improve the efficiency and profitability of transporting textile products to international markets, which also led to the better quality sandstones from around Huddersfield, Halifax and Bradford being used in the town halls and many other prestigious buildings in the growing towns of West Yorkshire and beyond. 

The south elevation

The Week Commencing 18th July 2022

 

The Sheffield U3A Geology Group at Black Rocks

Following on from my brief exploration of Rawmarsh, in Rotherham, my next day out was with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group on a field trip along the High Peak Trail in the Peak District National Park, for which I had undertaken a recce 3 weeks earlier with Stuart - our leader on the day. 

 

Page 1 of the report on the geology field trip

Our walk was based on Excursion No. 4 in the Geologist’s Association East Midlands Guide No. 63 (2003) by the late Trevor Ford, who was an expert on Peak District geology, but we discovered that many of the locations on this linear walk were no longer visible and my previous posts, Geology on the High Peak Trail - Part 1 and Part 2, describe the points of interest adequately. 

 

Page 2 of the report on the geology field trip

 

As often happens when I assist with a recce, on the day itself I spend more time taking photographs to use in the subsequent report on the field trip, which I have included here, and there is no need to repeat these observations. Once we had all finally gathered in one place at Black Rocks car park, after confusion with the Sat Nav co-ordinates that Stuart sent out in the itinerary, we took half of our cars to the Middleton Top Countryside Centre car park and walked down the High Peak Trail back to Black Rocks via the National Stone Centre. 

 

Page 3 of the report on the geology field trip

 

After a very leisurely day out, Stuart drove us back to Hunter’s Bar and, after making my way back to Sheffield Interchange, I took advantage of the sunshine by having a pint of Guinness at the Old Queens Head and thinking about a visit to Catcliffe Glass Cone (1740) a couple of days later. 

 

A pint of Guinness at the Old Queens Head

Having noted one of my Language of Stone Blog posts on Facebook, Susan Kahler of the Catcliffe Cone Community Group had approached me to ask if I could advise them on the materials that had been used in the construction of the glass cone. 

 

The information panel for Catcliffe Glass Cone

 

Although I had passed by it innumerable times on the bus from Treeton to Rotherham and taken a few general photographs during one of my local walks during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, I had never taken a close look at it and was therefore interested to see its interior. 

 

Catcliffe Glass Cone

 

Having been picked up from my house, at the glass cone I was introduced to Shaun Pashley, the Secretary of the group and, quickly walking around the cone, I could immediately see that the plinth is built in the locally distinctive Rotherham Red sandstone. 

 

Rotherham Red sandstone at Catcliffe Glass Cone

 

Looking inside the cone, the lower part of the interior is also built in Rotherham Red sandstone, which I was actually quite surprised to see, given the very utilitarian nature of the structure and that it would have been presumably cheaper to have built it entirely in brick. 

 

The interior of Catcliffe Glass Cone

 

When asked about the source of the bricks, which is not my forte, I suggested that they were probably not made at an established brickworks but instead just used the local mudstone, which weathers into a yellow clay and is marked as the grey areas on the geological map. 

 

The geology around Catcliffe Glass Cone

 

The red bricks that were later produced at the large C19 brickworks in the region, as well as the biproduct of most of the coal mines, used mudstone that was ground down, mixed with water and then extruded through a die; however, looking at a piece of brick with the naked eye, I can see that the raw material was unsorted and contains large particles, which suggests that it was obtained from weathered mudstone of a kind that I find when digging in my garden. 

 

A piece of brick from Catcliffe Glass Cone

 

Having just taken a few photos and provided enough information for Susan and Shaun to supplement their own previous research, which took just over an hour, I was taken home and continued preparing for a day out to Dewsbury the following day.

 

A view inside Catcliffe Glass Cone

 

An Exploration of Rawmarsh - Part 2

 

Rawmarsh war memorial

Continuing my brief exploration of Rawmarsh, the Grade I Listed St. Mary’s church (1839), by J.P. Pritchett, is largely built in the early English English Gothic style and forms a very prominent landmark, which is set on high ground at the eastern end of a ridge formed by the Kent’s Rock.

 

St. Mary's church

The main feature that I wanted to see is what Historic England describe as the remains of a heavily restored Norman door, which was incorporated into the rebuilt tower (1869). I have seen many churches that have elaborately carved Romanesque door surrounds, but the only time that I have seen sandstone used for these is at St. Margaret’s churchyard in Swinton. 

 

The south door

Standing back to take a couple of photographs, I couldn’t see anything that I thought looked like ancient masonry but, when I got very close to look its details, I could see very weathered cushion capitals and unrestored colonnettes that look original. 

 

Reused Norman cushion capitals on the south door

 

Much of the masonry is moderately dirty and it is not easy to see its physical characteristics but, quickly walking around its exterior, I did note that more than one variety of Coal Measures sandstone, of unknown provenance, have been used in its construction – with one of these having proved not to be very durable. 

 

Restored masonry with matching tool marks

At low level, the masonry has been replaced in a few places and I was very interested to see that recent restoration work has reproduced the original tooled finish, which has long since been eroded away on much of the original masonry. 

 

Fossil plants

Making my way back down to High Street, I continued down the hill and stopped briefly to photograph a block of sandstone in the retaining wall, which contained a couple of large fragments of fossil plants, before arriving at Rawmarsh war memorial. 

 

Rawmarsh war memorial

The cenotaph (1928), designed by Charles Hutton while still a student at the University of Liverpool, is built out of a massive medium grained sandstone that could be one of the sandstones from the Millstone Grit Group of Derbyshire or West Yorkshire or even Bolton Woods sandstone, which has been used for the cenotaph in Clifton Park. 

 

Inscriptions on the cenotaph

 

On the cenotaph, the inscriptions are cut into a stone that I didn’t look at closely at the time and which I can’t readily identify from my photographs, but Cumbrian green slate from the Borrowdale Volcanic Group has been used for the wall plaques, which commemorate the casualties of WWII, active service in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan and acts of terrorism. 

 

Plaques commemorating casualties of WWII

Quite unusually, the memorial incorporates a trough in the wall behind the cenotaph, with a bronze lion’s head that is presumably the water spout, which has been placed there as a tribute to the part played by horses in the 1914-1918 war. The scale, design and planting make this one of the most impressive war memorials that I have seen in northern England, which makes the fact that is not listed even more surprising. 

 

The water trough

One particularly interesting detail is the extract from the war poem For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon - At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them. This has been inscribed in the sandstone surround of a poppy that is made of Permo-Triassic red sandstone, which has has lost its brightness, with a centre of ‘black granite’. 

 

The poppy with an extract from For the Fallen

 

The last listed building that I wanted to photograph was the old National Coal Board pumping house (1823) on Westfield Road, which was part of the infrastructure relating to the extensive coal mining activities on the land owned by Charles Wentworth-Fitzwilliam. 

 

The pumping station

 

Having finished my task of photographing the handful of listed buildings in Rawmarsh, Rawmarsh, I followed the footpath to Terrace Road and, before reaching the main A633 road that would take me down to Parkgate, I stopped at the top of Ashwood Road to photograph the view of the escarpment of the Rotherham Red variety of the Mexborough Rock, which is formed on the southern extremity of the Don Monocline. 

 

The view from the top of Ashwood Road

 

An Exploration of Rawmarsh - Part 1

 

A Georgian headstone in St. Mary's churchyard

My day out to York with the Treeton Local History Group was very enjoyable and, although I would balk at the £8.60 entrance fee if I had to pay this myself, I did appreciate seeing Clifford's Tower and having a good long walk around York to photograph its historic buildings. 

 

Listed buildings in Rawmarsh

 

A few days later I set off to explore Dewsbury, only to arrive in Wakefield to discover that Arriva buses had announced a strike at midnight, despite the customer services at West Yorkshire Metro telling me that there was no pending strike action when I spoke to them the day before. Having not yet planned any other full days out, I decided to spend the following Saturday morning by taking a walk around Rawmarsh in Rotherham, to photograph a handful of buildings for the British Listed Buildings website, before going to the Parkgate Shopping Centre.

 

Rawmarsh Methodist church

Having alighted from the bus at the High Street/Haugh Road stop, I had a quick look at the unlisted Rawmarsh Methodist Church (1908), which was designed by the Sheffield architect WJ Hale, whose work I was familiar with at the Wesley Hall, Hale Court and Congregational Church in Crookes and the Bole Hill, Hammerton Street and Lydgate Lane Sheffield Board Schools.

 

Rawmarsh Methodist church

 

Various architectural elements, such as the tracery and the square flat topped buttresses, are shared in common with his other Methodist churches, as are the very elaborate carvings above the main entrance. At Hale Court, the Historic England description states that the carvings are by Frank Tory and it makes me wonder if the very distinctive style of the carvings on his later churches are also by him. 

 

Stone carvings on Rawmarsh Methodist church

 

Also, looking at the stones used, they do not look like anything that I have seen in the Rotherham area, where the Rotherham Red variety of the Mexborough Rock is the only sandstone that developed any kind of reputation as a building stone. The walling looks similar to the Crawshaw Sandstone from Bole Hill, with the dressings looking like Stoke Hall stone, which both feature in all of Hale’s work that I have seen in Sheffield. 

 

A stone carving on Rawmarsh Methodist church

 

Walking down High Street to St. Mary’s church, I briefly walk around the adjoining cemetery, which is overgrown and slowly reverting to woodland, where plain slabs constituted the dominant type of monument, but I did find a headstone that was decorated with crockets and a sculpted angel. 

 

A gravestone in Rawmarsh (High Street) cemetery

Although I hadn’t set out to find them, I did also see one of the three Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstones, made in Stancliffe Darley Dale gritstone, which commemorates Private W. Hargreaves of the Northumberland Fusiliers. 

 

The headstone of Private W. Hargreaves

 

I had already seen this regimental crest at Woodhouse cemetery, where the headstone is made in a granite, which the reply to query sent to the CWGC suggests is either Vire Blanc or Glenaby from France, but the design of the crest on granite is not easy to see. 

 

The Northumberland Fusiliers regimental crest

 

In St. Mary’s churchyard, there are some large Georgian headstones with fine examples of calligraphy and letter cutting and, having photographed the Grade II Listed St. Mary’s rectory on the opposite of the road and the church railings, I had a brief look at the church itself.

 

Georgian headstones in St. Mary's churchyard