More Quarry Hunting

Posted on February 8, 2015 by admin

hmm, our quarry was a quarry, a quarry or quarries that supplied stone (St Maughans) to local buildings, for example St Mary’s, Stanford with Orleton.

Another magnificent perfect blue sky winter day, ice in the shade, crystal views in all directions, what better place to be than the Teme Valley near Stanford even if for much of the time we were slipping through mud and tripping over brambles. Having phoned first, Ian and I called and made our acquaintance with Mr Churchill who tenants Fall Farm. He kindly allowed us on land alongside the Bromyard Road where Mr Lane had told us there would be a stone quarry, and indeed a crag is marked on the OS map. Mr C told us of a lime kiln near the quarry and a place where years ago a farm worker used to live, saying he was surprised that the kiln was not listed.

After a bit of a false start on a trail that dead ended in impenetrable woodland we found good, if muddy tracks and around the corner there was the quarry.

Ian, for scale, on the quarry face

Now well taken back into nature so very little rock was showing it was nevertheless clear enough to access the face. On the day, Ian was the more agile so scrambled up the slope, found some rock and we brought back a few samples. After scrubbing up and a full dishwasher cycle see below for a picture of micaceous sandstone we believe to be St Maughans, a Devonian Formation, used in many local buildings. Realising that St M

St Maughans from the Quarry

along this part of the valley, sits atop Bishops Fromelimestone (formerly Psammosteus), Ian descended into the steep Vee side dingle below the quarry and lo and behold with a bit of digging about, found the typical noduley limestone that typifies this calcrete or fossilised soil, picture below.

We did not locate the lime kiln, this requires another visit, but one can only assume that it was placed there to take advantage of the calcrete,

St Mary’s Church

there being to our knowledge no other sources of lime this side of the valley. We need to check but it could be that the main quarry was the source of stone for St Mary’s Church that sits so proudly on a promontory over the valley above Stanford Court, built there when a large lake was required in front of the Court.

Washed and dried specimens (click to enlarge):

Bishops Frome and St Maughans

BF and St M 2

Stanford Reminiscences

Posted on February 7, 2015 by admin

I am indebted to Robin Dean, good friend and churchwarden at St Mary’s Stanford with Orleton who directed me to the audio recordings below.

Robin’s note to me:

There is some good audio stuff on the parish website:– the so called Temple is a fascinating place, sadly more and more in ruins but still worth a visit and a right of way passes close by. John Shew (who used to farm Noverton) tells a little of the local history on the attached recording. Also a brief audio on Southstone Rock by John (Hermits living in the woods).

http://www.temevalleysouth.org.uk/media/

The Picturesque Movement and Satanic Teme Valley

Posted on February 7, 2015 by admin

Thanks To Kate Andrew, Project Manager leading the Building Stones Project based at the University of Worcester, for the following notes on the history and industry of the Teme Valley in the Shelsley area. These follow on from recent blogs about tufa and lost quarries.

Tufa: In terms of tufa formation, Beryl Harding wrote a really good paper about it in the Woolhope Transactions in about 2000 – this covers Southstone rock – photosynthesing moss and a drop in pH are critical to the CaCo3 coming out of solution and precipitating.

Coal: In Abberley there is a thin coal seam more or less at the boundary of the Halesowen Sandstone and Halesowen mudstone and then better seams that were mined up until the 1920s

The Temple and Stanford Court (the Court was the location of Forest Fencing) was a planned landscape garden and Kate suspects the Temple was part of that – could have had a cold plunge pool in it or been a place for banqueting and parties.

Kate’s Internet research reveals that Sir Edward Winnington (owner of Stanford court and brother in law to a Foley of Witley Court, before the Dudleys) and Richard Payne Knight were friends and both interested in the Picturesque movement, Stanford Bridge being built in 1794 by Nash, the architect of the Picturesque.

Richard Payne Knight was one of the founders of the Picturesque movement and created an enhanced landscape with hermitages, caves, springs, cold plunge baths etc upstream from all his forges and furnaces in Downton Gorge (on the Upper Teme below Leintwardine). The thrill was the contrast of dark satanic mills of iron production with wild “natural” beauty. This was in the 1780s-1820s time period.

A temple and hermitage are mentioned on the register of parks and gardens for Stanford Court, so Kate suggests that this is likely to be a Picturesque movement landscape hidden under the undergrowth. Kate conducted in depth research on Thomas Andrew Knight, Richard Payne’s younger brother and this involved looking into Knight family history and iron workings, among many other things.

Iron forging – the critical thing was decent water supply for bellows to get the furnaces up to high enough temperature and a good supply of wood close by for charcoal production – this is pre-industrial revolution/ Abraham Darby/ Coalbrookdale iron we are talking about. The iron ore could be brought in by pack horse or river as it is much easier to move than charcoal (which disintegrates if moved and is then no use) and decent water supply for power. You don’t need limestone flux if using charcoal for smelting as it is the sulphur in the coal of later processes that causes the problems. There were small forges all over the place in these parts, both smelting ore and working the pig iron with forge hammers – the critical thing was a decent water supply close to charcoal.

There is an interesting comparator with forges in the Downton Gorge owned by Richard Payne Knight.

Searching for ORS Quarries

Posted on February 3, 2015 by admin

The above acronym was useful for one thing, it allowed me to fit the title all on one line, but they are not helpful to use unless in very common parlance.

Old Red Sandstone (mainly Devonian) forms the bulk of what we from Martley see across the Teme. There is no Devonian in Martley but there are one or two buildings, most notably the Old School by the Church, made from a grey/green sandstone (one wonders if geologists have hyper eyesight at times) that certainly does not occur locally. Travel to Clifton and especially Bromyard and many buildings are from the same material, so what is it? Years have gone by and no answer to this, one would have thought simple, question was found in spite of 3 or 4 geologists being asked their opinion. So, we made our own decision by concluding the flippin’ obvious–St Maughans Formation–has to be, indeed is.

Our interview last week with John Lane suggested three quarry sites near Stanford and this Sunday, Mike, Jane, Colin and self had a fabulous walk in brilliant, sunny but cold weather, tramping the dingles and hills near Park Farm, Stanford Court and Stanford Church. Where the land slopes steeply from the Bromyard plateau down to the Teme Valley it is heavily wooded, a tangled and often impenetrable jungle with access ways for those who rear pheasants and remove timber. There is a good rights of way network too and the signage not bad given the remote location.

We reckon we found the site of one St Maughans quarry (there are two more to investigate but we ran out of time). There was a pretty little spring rising in a small cave under massive, bedded sandstone and being winter the best time to observe rocks that in summer will be well covered up.

Just around the corner from the quarry we came across the fabled Temple of Temple dingle (GR SO370253 264721), a place both Mike and I had long heard of but never been able to find. There it was, at the side of a very good track, terribly ruined but showing its obvious former splendour. Who built it? When? How long was it occupied? Many questions and will attempt to find answers–some of you may know, if so please would you contact me, thanks?

Pictures:

Threatened Closure of Ludlow Museum Resource Centre

Posted on February 3, 2015 by admin

NB A well attended (200) meeting was held in Ludlow and signatures are being collected, I know some of you have added yours to the cause. Here is Janet’s note after the meeting:

BBC Radio Shropshire attended the overwhelmingly supported open meeting which the Friends of Ludlow Museum held last week. They interviewed many and now are broadcasting an hour long phone-in programme (3rd Feb 10-11am) with the Leader of Shropshire Council, Keith Barrow, answering the questions.

Many thanks for all your support and if you haven’t yet please sign the e-petition :

https://shropshire.gov.uk/committee-services/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?Id=500000018&$LO$=1

1000 signatures needed, see message below. LMRC is a nationally important centre for geology so TVGS is supporting them in their bid to prevent its closure:

I am a committee member of the Friends of Ludlow Museum and we would like The Woolhope Club to be aware of the proposed closure by Shropshire Council of the LMRC and ask for your support in our fight to stop this. Knowledge of and access to the collections including the nationally important geology collections also will disappear; the 3 curators were informed of their redundancy just before Christmas. I could go on – suffice it to say we are holding a Public Meeting in Ludlow at Oscars, in the Assembly Rooms, at 11 am on Thursday, 22 January to fight this. Michael Rosenbaum, Emeritus Professor of Geology will chair an open discussion and we will launch an e-petition to get the 1000+ signatures we need to get this matter on the agenda of the full Shropshire Council on 26 February, to be reconsidered.
If you could provide me with an email address I would be delighted to send you our Press Release, the poster announcing the meeting and the LMRC Briefing document which details the services they provide and 2013/14 usage statistics. Please forward this email to all your departments. I shall hope to hear from you very soon and hope The Woolhope members will add their weight to this campaign.Any comments can also be sent to Many thanks
Janet Rolfe Smith

Talks with Mr John Lane, Stanford Bridge

Posted on January 28, 2015 by admin

On Saturday 24th January Mike Install and I visited Mr John Lane of JW Lane Stanford Bridge, in order to learn more about the history of quarrying in the Teme Valley, especially tufa.

Mr Lane has taken an active interest in the history of the valley for many years and his company has been involved with many schemes involving excavations, drainage and so on that gave him ample opportunity to check out what lies underneath.

First of all he let us inspect the proceedings of the Worcester Geographic Society that contained findings from the valley. Since the meeting, David Cropp has traced and purchased this document which must surely be only representative of the outpourings of this Society.

JL told us of furnaces in Hell Hole (one of the alarmingly named Teme dingles, others–The Witcheries, Devil’s Den and so on), with flues laid up the steeply sloping ground to gain draught. Question, from where did iron ore come from–limestone is available and of course charcoal from local woods. There is a farm with the name Forge Farm that JL said had a rolling mill driven by water delivered by a leat still visible especially when wet, taken from above the weir, the remains of which can be seen below New Mill Bridge. The Foley’s of Witley Court operated this and further up towards Southstone is Furnace Farm so these two alone bespeak an industrial past. As I recall the Archaeological Society has papers referring.

JL said that the largest tufa quarry was up behind Shelsley Church and the Court House. Several buildings in the area are wholly or partly made from tufa and altho not a heavy stone, local supplies make sense. Our investigations proved large deposits in this side valley, much covered up with vegetation now. Up the hill climb at the esses, where we investigated on 22nd Jan (see post) there is an underground reservoir as well as the open, now much silted pond. From the reservoir, a 3″ cast iron pipe ran down hill, splitting in two to drive a Pelton wheel for electricity at the Court House and the other branch to feed the pool for Shelsley Water Mill, recently beautifully restored by hill climb wrinklies. In addition, JL said that he placed the plastic sump that we saw under the small waterfall, and that this fed into the underground reservoir mentioned above.

Interestingly he said, German WW1 prisoners of war erected a small suspension bridge across the Teme I think to access Brockhill Court and this also carried a water supply pipe. The whole affair suffered badly whenever the Teme flooded.

In the old days all houses in the valley were fed with water from local streams.

At Southstone he says there is evidence of quarrying–saw marks where blocks were cut but he says Southstone was not a major quarrying site. There was a hydraulic ram at the back of Southstone, used to supply water locally and he says he has a picture of the house on top of the rock (now gone) with its well tended garden.

There is a large tufa quarry, well worked, at Eastham and gave the address of the owner.

JL did not show us any documents other than the one above, but am sure he has a whole library somewhere. He made the statement that there is coal in Pouk Lane–this needs to be checked and he gave us locations for three quarries, suspected as sources of a widely used building stone, St Maughans Old Red Sandstone and we will check these out. He also said there is coal on Woodbury and that the quarry at the corner of Fetterlocks Lane (now owned by Worcestershire Wildlife) ceased in 37/38.

Tufa and Travertine in the Teme Valley

Posted on January 25, 2015 by admin

These blogs are written as a record of TVGS activities. That is important. I personally have absolutely no desire to reserve this space for myself, other contributors are most welcome. Having said that I also want to say what a journey this geology thing is becoming. Who would have thought a few years ago, in 2010, after a dig at Martley Rock, that we would be drawn into a new pastime of endless fascination? Who would have thought that this odyssey would take us to the Houses of Parliament, to France, to the Teme valley in company of academics, to listen, spell bound to great speakers, some even from our own community? Me? You must be joking. Many of us feel this way. We often quip that our society only wheels out real geologists when we need them. Believe me we so appreciate the time you freely give us, all of you. It is such a great privilege to learn about this science, to wonder at the life a pebble has led, to look at our landscape with new eyes, to start to interprete it, and to consider the unimaginable years that have passed to leave it in the brief state that we see now.

For us there are new adventures nearly every day, Monday (19th Jan 2015) the science of volcanoes, yesterday (22nd) extreme tufaring (my word) in the Teme Valley, tomorrow a meeting with an old man who can relate the story of the valley, of its quarries, occupants and history. We are particularly keen to find out more about where the stone for Shelsey Walsh Church and the cottage nearby was quarried, what happened at Southstone, that great crag of tufa, perhaps the largest in the country with its sacred spring, vanished chapel and hermitage.

Our field scramble yesterday in the company of Professor Ian Fairchild and with Hannah Townley of Natural England, led us to parts of the west Teme jungle I doubt few have ever been. A spider’s web of fallen trees, exposed roots, brambles, muddy slides, precipitous slopes, waterfalls, ferns and creepers. Oh, and tufa! The valley abounds in it. These days largely covered in vegetation, except at grand Southstone or where a fallen tree lies, its net of roots upended to reveal the underlying rocks and earth, characteristically orange with tufa. As I understand it, rain falls on the Bromyard plateau, dissolving particles of calcium carbonate found within the matrix of Devonian St Maughans formation, itself marked by varying deposits of Bishops Frome limestone, a fossilized soil or calcrete. This can be seen as a marked horizon all along the valley in the form of a layer of noduley limey lumps up to 3 m thick in places, usually well hidden with vegetation but appearing where, for example, small land slips occur. At the impervious underlying Silurian Raglan mudstone contact, springs erupt, at Southstone gushingly so, saturated with dissolved carbonate, releasing carbon dioxide as the water reaches the surface. Not much more of a prompt is needed–perhaps a drop down a slope, to pass a tipping point so that the saturated water starts to deposit its load of carbonate. Particular varieties of moss like this water and grow abundantly, but one suspects briefly, to be encased in the lime, petrified on the spot. This process seems to have continued since the last ice age though deposition rates, Ian said, must have declined. Dates from the base of the deposit are from around 7000 years ago. Southstone is a unique site, a site of great value and heritage with a social and recent geological history and should be conserved. Here are a few pictures (by Mike Install). There will be more…..

Walkers are Welcome Promote Geology Themed Walks

Posted on January 13, 2015 by admin

Martley was the 13th community in the UK to achieve accreditation by the Walkers are Welcome movement. You can read about it HERE. As its name suggests, WaW encourages communities to make walkers welcome through achieving certain criteria, such as local walks, community support, local walks maintenance group and so on. Since its inception WaW has achieved notable success, now incorporating well over 100 members and many more on application.

TVGS put forward the idea to WaW of inviting their member communities to perhaps encourage walking with a geology theme and WaW inserted the following into their most recent newsletter. TVGS itself is leading occasional geology themed walks with the local Worcester Ramblers group and this has been very well received.

Below is the WaW editorial and HERE is a more detailed version for members only

Geology Walks
Themes add interest to any guided walk, walking festival programme or self-guided publication. Having lost its stuffy boys’ grammar school image, the fascinating study of geology is becoming increasingly popular. Not only in rural areas though. The stones used in buildings can provide a fascinating insight into old ways of working and living, many exhibit excellent fossils.

In Martley, Worcestershire, walking groups can avail themselves of a geology interpreter to go along and explain the local landscape, how it was formed, the underlying rock types and how they influence everything from buildings to agriculture.

The success of this initiative is worth passing on, so if your local group thinks it a good idea, why not plan one of your trips with a geological theme? Remember this is aimed at non-geologists as an introduction. The walks are not geology field trips!

If you want to pursue this, contact John Nicklin, Parish Paths Warden for Martley, our 13th WaW village, and Secretary of the Teme Valley Geological Society. Further details are on the NEW Geology Walks factsheet available to download.

Landslide Nearly Cuts off Martley

Posted on January 13, 2015 by admin

Well not quite but it was a big lump or three. Alasdair and I were travelling back from a geology walk recce when we came across this at 4.15pm 13th January:

We pulled over, flashers on, and set about trying to move the debris but that big piece, well it was simply too unwieldy and heavy. Fortunately a passing contractor stopped and with great effort the three of us rolled it on to the verge.

Almost immediately, riding over the hill in the gathering gloom, came two cheerful chappies in their Worcestershire Highways lorry equipped with shovels, a petrol driven jack hammer and to be honest an energetic disposition. In no time the debris was loaded on to the truck and driven off to a dump in Malvern (best place for it did I hear you say?).

Latest Martley Rock Report

Posted on January 9, 2015 by admin

authored by our friend Bill Barclay, leader of the investigation work in September when a 3rd set of temporary trenches were dug in the field adjacent to our Martley Rock site.

You may read the report HERE

Teme Valley Geological Society

Martley as a centre of extraordinary geology

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