Random Jottings

I thought I'd add a few odd buildings from the Ruyton area. So I'll start with a barn from just outside Ruyton itself. It's really rather interesting to see the different colours in the stonework. There are only restricted entrances and the stonework itself is random.



Towards the top of the hill in Ruyton is this building, tagged onto a house. I can only assume it was a workshop or stable of some kind and it seems to be in two stages.



This is the view in the opposite direction and the wall of the shed in front looks as though it was much taller at one time. The shame is that it has all been filled in with blockwork. The house is no longer for sale!



Just across the road is this building which looks late Victorian in frontage and may well have been a "Home Butchers" by which I mean that slaughtering was done on the premises.



This is a detail of the sliding door and the hayloft door above



and this is a view up into the yard at the back of the store. The upper floor of the store would be a nice place for a model railway!

GVT river bridge at Dolywern

When the Glyn Valley Tramway was converted from horse to steam power it was found that the "S" bend through Dolywern was far too severe to be worked by an 0-4-2 tram loco so a deviation was built and a railway bridge was built over the River Ceiriog to ease the curve considerably. At the same time a waiting room was added. A rather nice waiting room that still exists. When the line closed for some reason the scrap merchants left the bridge in position and eventually it came into the care of the Leonard Cheshire Homes who had bought the hotel, to who we should be exceedingly grateful. Unfortunately though this very preservation has caused a large problem for any re-instaters of the line, to whatever gauge, as rooms have been built across the trackbed. Not insurmountable, it justs needs a lot of money to cure!

These photographs were taken a while ago on a 35mm camera that is a point and click variety.









I didn't know there was a cattle creep under the line at this point as I had not seen it mentioned in any literature about the line.

There was another river bridge at the entrance to Glyn Ceiriog village itself and two more up in the quarry area. The 7mm NGS does or did a half drawing of the bridge.



Now this is a commercial postcard of Dolywern and it shows the road, little changed except for an indifferent coat of tarmac and the railway going around the back of the hotel to reach the river bridge. Look closely and you'll see a couple of wagons on a siding and on the other side of the road the waiting room. The GVT style of iron hurdle abounds in the valley.

Where shall we go next? Let me know by leaving comments and I'll see what I have photos of.

The Chapel and the Pump

Now this is not in Ruyton at all but in the fields around Myddle, the other side of Baschurch.

It would seem that the area was , in the early 19th century, a place of Primitive Methodists who built a small chapel. I would imagine that as farming became mechanised there just were not enough parishioners left and the tiny Chapel, built in 1842 closed and was eventually turned into an implement shed. It's currently being re-built by the look of it.




The building is sandstone blockwork and there is an inscription over where the doors were in the light grey stone. The windows are a gracious tracery of ironwork typical of the products of Coalbrookdale at the time of building. Bill Bedford probably does something very similar.



The pump is not far from Percy Throwers old house and I've photographed the inscription which tells you all about it:-



The pump is a normal cast iron one that the operating mechanism has been nicked from and somehow I suspect that the trough is far from original. I would imagine something more akin to a horse trough, but then I'm a Londoner and we abounded in horse troughs.




Certainly though that stone to the very left of the pump looks as though it once held up something fairly substantial.

Baschurch GWR Goods Office

These photos must have been taken before 1998 because my old Peugeot 306 features in one shot and I bought a Passat that year.

The GWR actually made Baschurch a freight concentration depot in the 1930's and I would imagine that was the last time this building was modified. It's a superb example of a corrogated iron building on brick footings and it does show quite well how windows were worked into the ironwork.

I'm going to use an adaptation of it as a goods shed at Ruyton.

Enjoy as they say:-



Road side



Station side



Office Entrance



Store end

Now there is no point in rushing off to photograph this building because its gone, despite being in the "Preservation Area" whatever that means in a village where you can build anything you like. On the site now are some sandstone boulders behind a BR type fence to stop folks stealing them!

The Hut on the Hill

Now further up the hill, on the other side of the road there was a First World War hut that somebody or a family lived in:-



As you would expect it's gone now and another, more "swish" house is in its place. I don't suppose too many folks ever noticed it. I always thought it might make a basis for the beginnings of a narrow gauge station building. The other end looked like this:-



and there was a small more modern shed at the other end:-



The wall in front is absolutely typical of Ruyton.

Ruyton moves on

Today, 9th May 2010, I stopped in Ruyton-of-the-Eleven-Towns to record things as they are today and it all goes to show that things move on.

Here we have the terrace as it is today:-



and the end looks like this:-



So they really don't show much change over the years. One thing though, I was suprised just how low the two gables are in relation to the terrace.

Now the stables is another thing!





They have had a lot of work done to them and have been totally re-roofed and also had a quadrant added to the tops of the walls to support the new roof trusses.

You'll notice the setting has changed too. Ruyton aquired two new housing estates which has changed the roads and added roundabouts etc, all on what is really a country lane!

Moving on from Ynys Gwyntog

The village of Glancrug on the Island of Ynys Gwyntog had a stable, as you and I well know. Well, just down the hill slightly from the terrace there is also a stable and it is built from dressed sandstone blocks.



Now this photograph shows even better how erosion takes place if the rain bounces back up. I don't know why this should be. I doubt that the corrugated iron roof is original although it may have been on the building for a long time. The blocks are dressed and if you enlarge the photo you'll see the tool marks on the face of the sandstone blocks.



This shows the rear of the building. I'd have not expected to find an opening in the rear of the building but there certainly is one. However, the building is old so many modifications may have been made during its lifetime.



This shows the front of the building and you can see that time and tide ( ! ) have taken their toll of the fabric. Even the doors are displaced slightly. You can easily see how the sandstone facing has crumbled where the weather has got to the individual blocks and I can only assume that this is because they are taken from different parts of the quarry. However, its a privileged building as sandstone blocks must be a lot more expensive than sandstone rubble.

Now there is a cart road to the side of this building and I suspect we are looking at what was the rear with this view and only later in its life has it been focused on the "main" road.