Image ID: 41970

Bob's Rock', off Nottingham Road, Stapleford, c 1900s

off Nottingham Road
Stapleford
Nottinghamshire
England

Natural stone outcrop where John Wesley preached.John Wesley (1703-91) was an English theologian, evangelist, and founder of The Methodist religious movement. The established Anglican church was hostile to Methodism and most of the parish churches were closed to him. Wesley's friend, the evangelist George Whitefield, was also excluded from churches and preached in the open air, in February, 1739, to a company of miners. Wesley hesitated to accept Whitefield's earnest request to copy this bold step. Overcoming his scruples, he preached his first sermon in the open air, near Bristol, in April of that year. He was still unhappy about the idea of field preaching, and would have thought, 'till very lately,' such a method of saving souls as 'almost a sin.' These open-air services were very successful; and he never again hesitated to preach in any place where an assembly could be got together, more than once using his father's tombstone at Epworth as a pulpit. He continued for fifty years, entering churches when he was invited, taking his stand in the fields, in halls, cottages, and chapels, when the churches would not receive him.The Wesley Place Chapel in Stapleford was built afterwards near this spot where John Wesley preached in 1774. He used the natural sandstone outcrop which stood next to a quarry. This rock is one of many outcrops in the area. The Hemlock Stone, Stapleford Hill and Bramcote Hills are all made up of red sandstone, which was deposited in the early Triassic period over 200 million years ago. The upper part of the nearby Hemlock Stone is heavily impregnated with barium sulphate or barites, a mineral that is resistant to weathering processes and thus forms a protective cap above the pillar of softer rock below. Over many millennia, erosion of the softer sandstone surrounding the pillar by water, ice and wind has shaped the strange form of the Hemlock Stone that we see today. Barytes also occurs in other parts of Stapleford and Bramcote Hills, and can be seen here. Mining and quarrying extraction industries have been a key feature of the local landscape, including deep coal mining to the west and north, opencast coal mining to the west and south and sand quarrying on the north slopes of Stapleford Hill itself. Sand quarrying continued on the Bramcote side of Coventry Lane until the 1990s. Nearby Sandiacre and Sandicliffe are named after the rocks around this part of the Erewash Valley. The underlying sandstone of the valley has created a natural aquafer, in which water seeps through the filtering rock and is held in it above harder layers of rock. This has been tapped since the late victorian period (there are inconspicuous pumps near the Station Road-Derby Road Bridge between Stapleford and Sandiacre), supplying much of the areas drinking water.

Date: c 1900

Organisation Reference: NCCS001712

Organisation: