On yet another very pleasant summery evening we took Hollins Lane to just below Lower Hollings Farm (Hollings = holly), paralleling the East Malvern Fault and Silurian Hills to the West, ourselves on the red Triassic lands of Sidmouth Mudstone. Turning back on field paths towards Martley, we enjoyed a distant view of the church and village framed in the stileway (you can say ‘doorway’ so why not ‘stileway’?) in the hedge.  A short break at the seat commemorating VE day then down to the church to explore its building stones which have arrived from a variety of sources.  The church has been documented HERE as part of the Building Stones Project run by Herefordshire and Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust.  This tells that most of the stone is Bromsgrove Sandstone and of local origin, from the quarries we call the Nubbins. Repairs, obvious by their precisely cut and uneroded lines are also Triassic-Bromsgrove in origin, taken mainly from quarries in and around Hollington in Staffordshire.  There are also other stones–some light buff coloured, oolitic limestone, no doubt from the Cotswolds and decorations over doorways of Carboniferous Sandstone HERE (I like this link, though not local).  Questions were raised about when repairs were carried out, why the ground level on the North side is higher than the floor inside the church and so on and I have asked those I think might know, for answers.

From the church we crossed the B4204, checked out the Chantry School geology garden (needs a bit of TLC) then back to our start at the Memorial hall.

Thanks for coming!