MEM24947 - Post-medieval gate piers at Church Close (Monument)

Two stone gate piers were noted in the northeastern corner of Church Close during field survey. The northern pier is semicircular, built of regularly coarsed slabs of local sandstone with a course of thin slates marking where it begings to taper to a flat top, finished with a cap of thin slate slabs. The southern pier is similarly constructed but the top is damaged. It is located in the position of a substantial gateway shown on the 1840 Tithe Map [1], on the former access route to the farm buildings at Ley (MDE1032) running through Church Close. The piers may be an earlier feature later incorporated into Bailey's designed landscape of the mid 19th Century, as the 1889 25 inch 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map [2] shows the access route from the Valley of Rocks terminating here. [3]