Warmsworth Old Village - Part 2

 

The south elevation of Warmsworth Hall

Continuing my exploration of Warmsworth old village, I walked up Glebe Street to High Road and carried on until I reached the Holiday Inn Hotel, which has been built inside the former grounds of the Grade II* Listed Warmsworth Hall (1702).

Warmsworth Hall

It is built in coursed limestone rubble, which has very often has blocks of a much greater size and thickness of blocks than the limestone seen in the lower part of No. 11 Glebe Street, which may be from the Brotherton Formation, and this looks like limestone from the Cadeby Formation.

The west elevation of Warmsworth Hall

The quoins and dressings, which are slightly paler in colour, are from the Cadeby Formation, with the roof quite unusually being stone slate rather than red pantiles, which is the traditional roofing material seen in the architecture on the Magnesian Limestone.

Gatepiers to Low Road East and Low Road West

After taking photos of the gate piers at Low Road East and Low Road West, which I hadn’t realised had been already photographed for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, I noted that they are built with massive limestone from the Cadeby Formation and then looked at the hotel grounds.

A crumbling garden wall

A wedding was taking place at the time of my visit, so I discretely obtained a sample of limestone from a small pile of rubble that had fallen away from a garden wall, which also displays different periods of building – firstly with thinly bedded limestone and later with more massive limestone.

A sample of limestone obtained from a garden wall

I didn’t examine any of the walling from which this sample had fallen, but it is yellowish in colour and full of small voids with brown staining. I have seen many limestone exposures that have crystal lined vughs, but I have not seen anything like this before. Looking at the sample with a hand lens, it is finely granular and tiny specks of black manganese oxide are scattered throughout the limestone, which is a feature of the dolomitic limestone from the Wetherby Member of the Cadeby Formation in the nearby Warmsworth Park.

 

The 1894 Ordnance Survey map of Warmsworth

On the 1894 edition of the Ordnance Survey map, Manor Farm is seen to occupy much of the land to the west and north-west of Warmsworth Hall. These buildings have since been demolished and replaced by the hotel and its car park, but sections of old walls remain, where the limestone has various colours – including yellow/red blocks – and more examples of triangular vents can be seen.

 

Old walls in the hotel car park

 

Returning to High Road, I then walked down Quaker Lane to photograph the Grade II Listed former Quaker Meeting House (1706), where the render has partly fallen off to reveal thinly bedded limestone rubble walling.

 

The former Quaker Meeting House

 

On the opposite side of the road, partially obscured by a high ground is the late C18 and early C19 Warmsworth House, also Grade II Listed, which has well squared and coursed walling, large quoins and a Welsh slate roof that has replaced the original red pantiles.

 

Warmsworth House

I didn’t stop long to look at them, but in the walling to No. 2 Quaker Lane, I noticed a wide variety of unusual textures in the limestone, which included burrows, shrinkage patterns, solution features and further examples of the unusual voids as seen in the sample that I collected.

 

Details of the walling at No. 2 Quaker Lane

Reaching Low Road West, I had a quick look at some of the attractive houses that predate the publication of the 1854 Ordnance Survey map, which look like they probably date back to the C18, before making my way towards Warmsworth Park.

 

Houses on Low Road West

Although there has been some infill development to replace a few demolished buildings, the architecturally uninspiring Holiday Inn hotel and its car park is large hidden out of view and, when walking around the Conservation Area, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that so much of its character has been preserved.

 

Longbarn

Passing Longbarn, yet another converted farm building that is a stone’s throw from Warmsworth Hall, my walk had reminded me of previous visits to Palterton and Hooton Pagnell – two ancient villages set on the Magnesian Limestone escarpment, which are dominated by several farms that are in close proximity to the manor house.

 

Various historic buildings on Low Road West

Continuing along Low Road West past the old school, more farm buildings and cottages, I stopped briefly to photograph the Grade II Listed barn on Low Road West, which I had previously seen from High Road at the beginning of my walk.

The Grade II Listed barn on Low Road West

 

Passing the land to the west, which I have since learned has not been developed because of major archaeologal objections, I finished my exploration of Warmsworth old village, which only took an hour, by having another look at the old quarry faces in Warmsworth Park - a site that I have used for field trips with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group and the XP School in Doncaster.

An old quarry face in Warmsworth Park

Warmsworth Old Village - Part 1

 

A triangular vent at Glebe House

When undertaking a recce for the Sheffield U3A Geology Group March 2022 field trip, while looking for a place to park when visiting the old quarry at Warmsworth Park, we drove through the old village of Warmsworth and I was very interested to see the old bell tower. 

 

Listed buildings in Warmsworth

 

Following on from trips to Hartley Brook Dike and Darfield Quarry, I decided to go and have a closer look and, as usual when planning my walks, I entered a postcode for Warmsworth on the British Listed Buildings website Photo Challenge and noted that several buildings did not have a photograph taken of them. 

 

Vernacular architecture in Warmsworth old village

 

Alighting from the X78 bus (now X3) from Rotherham at the High Road/Tenter Road stop, I crossed over the road to have a look at the stone and brick farm buildings and adjacent land which, not appearing to be cultivated or used for grazing, has surprisingly not being developed and adds character to the Conservation Area.

 

A Grade II Listed barn

From here I got a view of the Grade II Listed barn, of probable early C18 date, which I think is built with massive limestone from the Sprotbrough Member of the Cadeby Formation – which was quarried locally for lime, at least, at the Warmsworth Park quarry and is still been extracted at Warmsworth Quarry for industrial use. 

 

Warmsworth old village on the 1854 Ordnance Survey map

 

Walking to the east past Quaker Lane and Glebe Street to Backside Lane and then along Low Street East, I passed various buildings built in the same limestone, with both red pantile and Welsh slate roofs, which existed when the 1854 Ordnance Survey map was published – some of which were part of the farms that grew up around the Grade II* Listed Warmsworth Hall (1702). 

 

Vernacular architecture in Warmsworth old village

 

On the corner of Low Street East and Glebe Street is the Grade II Listed bell tower, which has a plaque that dates it to the C13, although the Historic England listing considers that it is probably from the C16 and the Gatehouse Gazetteer further speculates on this unusual structure. 

The bell tower

 

Turning to the south down Common Lane, I took at good at Glebe House, which is built with roughly squared and coursed rubble walling and has triangular vents in a former agricultural building – a feature that I had only seen before in a C17 farm building on Main Street in Hooton Pagnell. 

 

Glebe House

 

Retracing my steps to Glebe Street, I was very surprised to see that the old eastern boundary wall to Warmsworth Hall is supported by a series of very large buttresses, for which I can’t see any structural reason whatsoever. 

 

A boundary wall with buttresses on Glebe Street

 

No. 11 Glebe Street, on the opposite side of the road, is quite unremarkable except that the lower section is built with very thinly bedded limestone, with the upper part having been extended or rebuilt using a much more massive limestone, which is squared and coursed. 

 

No. 11 Glebe Street

 

The old village is actually underlain by the Brotherton Formation - previously known as the Upper Magnesian Limestone – which typically has very irregular thin beds and is not suitable as dimension stone, with it only being used locally for rubble walling where it outcrops. 

 

The geology around Warmsworth old village

In villages such as Campsall, Skellow, Sprotbrough and Wadworth, where the underlying Brotherton Formation can be seen as rubble walling in many historic buildings, very many of these are also rendered - a finish that I don’t recall seeing on the Cadeby Formation – as are many of the older houses in Warmsworth old village. 

Rendered terraced houses on Low Street East

The Mexborough Rock at Darfield Quarry

 

A bed of conglomerate in the Mexborough Rock at Darfield Quarry

The day after an afternoon spent in Sheffield, to explore the Upper Carboniferous rocks exposed along Hartley Brook Dike, I went to Darfield with my next neighbour Dan, who grew up in the village He wanted to show me around Darfield Quarry, in the Mexborough Rock, which I had briefly visited back in 1996 when surveying potential RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) in Barnsley. 

 

The geology around Darfield

After taking a quick walk around the churchyard at All Saints church, which I had visited during the Heritage Open Days festival in 2019 - to photograph the grave of Ebenezer Elliott – Dan drove to Balkley Lane, from which we approached the quarry and descended a set of steps made of large blocks of stone into the railway cutting, which disorientated me. 

 

An exposure of Mexborough Rock in the railway cutting

 

On my previous visit, I had entered the disused railway line at the west side of the old Mill Houses Bridge on Doncaster Road and had continued until I had found a few quarry faces, where I saw a conglomeratic bed that was full of clay ironstone nodules. I had also noted this distinctive feature in the Rotherham Red variety of this sandstone formation at Boston Park in Rotherham, which is now completely overgrown with ivy. 

 

An exposure of Mexborough Rock in the railway cutting

 

When preparing my “Let’s talk about the stones” walk, I had read a short article on the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT) website, which reported on the discovery of an ‘omelette structure’ at Boston Park and that SAGT were looking for evidence of a flood event. 

 

An 'omelette structure' in the Mexborough Rock at Boston Park

At the time of the original RIGS surveys in South Yorkshire, I was using colour transparency film to record my observations and, although I haven’t yet been able to scan and share them in a digital format, these would probably help to prove this hypothesis.

 

Concentrations of ironstone on the joint planes

 

On one of the quarry faces, the joint planes display dense concentrations of ironstone that look quite purple in colour, which I thought was quite unusual, but I couldn’t find the place where I had seen the conglomeratic bed. 

 

Massive sandstone passing upwards to flaggy beds

 

In the same quarry face, the transition from thick massive beds in the lower parts to flaggy beds with cross-bedding in the upper section can also be clearly seen. This reflects the change of the flow regime within the river channel that deposited the sediment and, as I have noticed in many other places, the flaggy beds are highlighted by the surface weathering processes. 

 

Stone carvings in Darfield Quarry

 

When wandering around the quarry, I was surprised to see that numerous faces and other relief sculptures had been cut into the quarry face, which have been undertaken here and elsewhere in Barnsley by Melvin Dickinson and Billy Johnson.

 

A stone carving

 

Eventually, I eventually found a bed in a quarry face that is obviously severely deformed, compared to the massive sandstone above and below it. Although the sediment has not been overturned here, as at Boston Park, it is a reasonable assumption that it relates to the same flood event. 

 

A deformed bed within the massive sandstone

 

Following this bed laterally, which reaches 20-25 cm in thickness, it is seen to contain a concentration of large clay ironstone pebbles, which can also be seen as isolated nodules in the overlying massive sandstone. 

 

A conglomeratic bed with ironstone nodules

 

Having succeeded in my objective of finding an exposure of this conglomerate, albeit in a different location to where I originally noted it, I took a set of record photographs that I can share if needed but, with SAGT not responding to my comments that I made about Darfield Quarry after I had seen the ‘omelette structure’, I am just content to have satisfied my curiosity about this. 

 

A detail of ironstone nodules in the conglomeratic bed

One interesting feature that I didn’t notice at the time is that, although most of the clay ironstone nodules are like those seen in the Rotherham Red sandstone, a large rounded clast seems to be a bedded sandstone that has been presumably been reworked from a consolidated deposit. 

 

A large clast of reworked sandstone

It was less than 2 hours since we had first arrived in Darfield, but it had been a very enjoyable afternoon out in the sunshine and, once I had collected a few specimens to add to my growing rock collection, we headed back to Dan’s truck and set off back to Treeton. 

 

Rocks collected from Darfield Quarry

 

Geology at Hartley Brook Dike

 

Sandstone, siltstone and mudstone at Hartley Brook Dike

The week after I had gone on a recce at Creswell Crags for the April 2023 Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip, knowing that I wasn’t going to spend a day mainly indoors, I instead made plans to explore the geology at Hartley Brook Dike – a Local Geological Site in Sheffield that is listed on the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT) website as having public access. 

 

Hartley Brook Dike in 1924 and today

 

On the 1924 edition of the Ordnance Survey map, revised in 1921, the area around this tributary of Blackburn Brook was countryside with a scattering with farms and cottages but, by the 1949 edition, the area had been overwhelmed by the vast sprawling housing estates that comprise Parson Cross and Shiregreen. 

 

An extract from the geological memoir

 

When looking at the 1:50,000 geological map and referring to the accompanying memoir, I expected to see some of the ‘Measures between Grenoside Sandstone and Whinmoor and Mickley Thin Coals’ and the description on the SAGT website refers to the Hartley Brook Dike as comprising the strata above the Penistone Flags. 

 

The geology around Hartley Brook Dike

Arriving in Ecclesfield on the No. 83 bus from Sheffield, my first stop was to photograph a water trough on High Street that is presumably is fed by a spring, where the Penistone Flags meets underlying mudstone. On the 1855 edition of the Ordnance Survey map, it is marked as standing in isolation next to a street that was then called Wallet End map but, by the time the 1906 edition was published, it had been incorporated into the boundary wall of the terraced houses that had been built along it. 

 

A water trough on High Street

Crossing over the A6135, I followed the public footpath past the allotments until I reached the footbridge over Hartley Brook Dike, which I then followed south for a few minutes until I found a place where I could get down to the stream bank, where I encountered black shale. 

 

Black shale

 

Getting down into the stream bed, the small slabs of flaggy sandstone provided stepping stones that enabled me to take a close look at the section of sandstone, siltstone and mudstone that is exposed in the stream bank. 

 

A stream bank exposure at Hartley Brook Dike

Just above and below the water's surface, the siltstone has a distinctly orange colour that is not seen at higher levels and reflects a high iron content of the sediment, although I could not see any ironstone nodules. 

 

A section of the Penistone Flags

 

A little bit further downstream, the dip of the strata brings a thick section of the Penistone Flags to water level, but I could not get close enough to obtain a specimen and therefore retraced my steps to a place when I could chip off a piece of the iron stained siltstone with my Estwing hammer. 

 

An exposure of iron stained siltstone

 

I managed to obtained a specimen from these beds but, when I cleaned this, the orange mud washed off to reveal a greyish body to the fresh parts of the siltstone, but with a dark brown patina on the weathered surfaces. 

 

A specimen of siltstone

 

Returning to the path, I continued upstream and in a few places I could see further outcrops of the Penistone Flags forming the streambed and projecting from the banks, but I wasn’t able to get down to the water level to investigate further. 

 

A view up Hartley Brook Dike

A couple of years earlier, during a walk from Grenoside to Chapeltown, I encountered a small outcrop of the Whinmoor Coal at Charlton Brook when traversing the Penistone Flags, but on this occasion I didn’t see that much variation in the lithologies. 

 

Various exposures of the Penistone Flags

 

When able to get down to the streambed, I collected a couple more samples, the first being a grey fine grained sandstone with traces of carbonaceous material. The second specimen is a larger piece of grey/light brown flaggy sandstone, which also has carbonaceous material on each of the well exposed bedding planes and also contains roots or stems. It also has a high iron content, with dense concentrations of ironstone appearing in places. 

 

Samples taken from the Penistone Flags

 

Further upstream, more examples of the Penistone Flags and associated siltstones and mudstones can be seen in the stream banks. As I had seen on previous walks in Shirtcliff Wood and Bowden Housteads Wood, the mudstone has weathered to yellow clay in several places. 

 

An exposure of mudstone weathered to yellow clay

 

The exposures become less frequent as the stream continues to the west and, after taking a couple of photos of the culvert beneath the A6135, I followed the path that crossed this main road and rejoined the stream, which was now named Tongue Gutter. 

 

The culvert beneath the A6135

 

Up to this point, the stream had flowed through a distinct valley, but from the A6135 to the point where it disappears at Wordsworth Avenue – 1.7 km to the west – this changes in character and the stream barely cuts into the surface; however, although less extensive than the exposures seen along Hartley Brook Dike, further examples of the Penistone Flags and weathered siltstone and mudstone can be seen in several places. 

 

Views of Tongue Gutter

 

When I first arrived at Hartley Brook Dike, following the recent heavy rainfall, water had been flowing across the footpath path from a spring on higher ground and, when walking up the path at Tongue Gutter, the source of another spring was evident from an area of boggy ground, where the flow of water could be seen. 

 

Boggy ground at an emerging spring

 

I followed Tongue Gutter as far as I could before it disappeared beneath a housing estate, after a very enjoyable 3 km walk, during which I had now completed an investigation of nearly all the named sandstone formations in Sheffield. 

 

Tongue Gutter entering a culvert beneath Wordsworth Avenue

Firstly taking advantage of the Parson Cross ASDA , I finished my walk by taking a quick look at the public art that is placed on the roundabout and opposite Chaucer School, before escaping from the rowdy schoolchildren and walking down to the next bus stop to get some peace.

 

Public art at Parson Cross