A Walk From Banner Cross to Ecclesall

 

Banner Cross Hall

The field trip to Nottingham in October 2022, with a few core members of the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, proved to be a great day out – with everyone being very impressed by the spectacular outcrops of Triassic sandstone and the historic architecture in the Lace Market. 

 

The area around Ecclesall, Bents Green and Greystones

 

For my next walk, I returned to Sheffield to explore the area around Ecclesall, Bents Green and Greystones and, as was now usual for many of my days out, I took advantage of the British Listed Buildings website Photo Challenge to plan my route. 

 

The location of Listed Buildings from the Photo Challenge

 

Alighting from the No. 81/82 bus at the Ecclesall Road South/Brincliffe Edge Road stop, I took a few quick snaps of the rendered No.14 Ecclesall Road South before heading up to Banner Cross Hall (1821), which I could only photograph with the zoom lens from the entrance to the drive.

 

Banner Cross Hall

 

I can’t get a proper appreciation the colour variation within the sandstone from these photos, mainly because of the dirt, but I can see that it is built with large ashlar blocks and that restoration work to the castellated parapet has been undertaken with a uniformly buff coloured sandstone. 

 

The dairy block at Banner Cross Hall

 

The Stoke Hall quarry in Grindleford, which according to the Building Research Establishment Report - The Building Sandstones of the British Isles - opened in 1835, has supplied much stone to Sheffield over the years and the King Edward VII Upper School (1838) on Glossop Road is apparently built with gritstone from Hathersage, but it is most likely that either the Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley or the Loxley Edge Rock has been used here. 

 

A section of the boundary wall at Banner Cross Hall

 

Moving on to photograph its boundary wall, which is Grade II Listed for its group value, I had expected it to be built with Brincliffe Edge Rock/Greenmoor Rock, a distinctive geological formation that I have seen in very many places in South Yorkshire – both at outcrop and in numerous historic buildings and boundary walls – with the quarries being only 500 metres away as the crow flies.

 

A detail of the boundary wall at Banner Cross Hall

 

A closer inspection reveals that it looks more like an unnamed silty sandstone from the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation (PLCMF), with its grey/light brown colouration with Liesegang rings and very fine cross-laminations, than the Brincliffe Edge Rock. 

 

An old quarry on the Banner Cross Hall Estate in 1855

 

On the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, a small quarry is marked approximately 500 metres to the south-east of Banner Cross Hall, which is set on one of the unnamed PLCMF sandstones, and may well have been part of the Banner Cross Hall estate - just one of those owned by the Bright family, who originally settled in Whirlow in the C15. 

 

The geology around the Banner Cross Hall estate

 

Continuing to Ringinglow Road, I stopped at the boundary wall to the house at the junction with Ecclesall Road South, where the sandstone looks different to the one seen at Banner Cross Hall and is medium grained and uniform in colour, with massive sandstone used for the coping stones. 

 

The boundary wall at Ecclesall Road South/Ringlowlow Road

 

My next building on my list to photograph was the Grade II Listed Chestnut Cottage (c.1780), a farmhouse and adjoining cottage that forms part of a complex of farm buildings that occupies the plot of land between Dobbin Road and Falkland Road. 

 

Views of various buldings at the Chestnut Cottage farm complex

 

On this occasion, I could just get a glimpse of this over a high garden wall and through the bushes and trees, so I just took a few photos of the various buildings at a distance from Dobbin Road and Falkland Road. The boundary walls are built in thinly bedded Brincliffe Edge Rock, with some iron staining on the joint planes, with the walling stone for the buildings being more massive but with the same colour characteristics. 

 

A Brincliffe Edge Rock dry stone wall on Ringinglow Road

 

When exploring the area around Brincliffe Edge, where there are still a few remnants of the old quarry faces, it is possible to see that there is considerable variation in the thickness of the beds of the Greenmoor Rock/Brincliffe Edge Rock, which would probably account for the same variation seen in the boundary walls.

 

A Brincliffe Edge Rock dry stone wall on Ringinglow Road

A Geology Field Trip in Nottingham

 

The Park Tunnel

Following my exploration of the geology and historic buildings of Grenoside, Whitley and Ecclesfield, in Sheffield, my next day out was to lead the Sheffield U3A Geology Group on their October 2022 field trip to Nottingham, to look at some Triassic geology and the historic architecture around the Lace Market. 

 

Page 1 of the report on the field trip to Nottingham

 

After spending very many hours on its preparation, as well as undertaking a full day recce with the group leader Paul, I have to say that a turnout of only 7 of more than 45 members was really quite disappointing – especially since 19 members had made the effort to get to Leeds on a cold February day in 2019. 

 

A report in the Mercian Geologist

 

Drawing on my own professional experience as a geologist, with specialist interests in historic architecture and stone matching learned in the building restoration industry in London, I had essentially based the walk on a very long day out that I spent in the city during the 2019 Easter Bank Holiday; however, for the granites that we had encountered on Old Market Square during the recce, I was relying on the report in the Mercian Geologist by Turner and Waltham. 

 

The Chester Formation in the Park Tunnel

 

Arriving at the tram stop on Old Market Square, where I had arranged for us to meet, I was a bit dismayed to discover that preparations for the forthcoming Nottingham Winter Wonderland event were well underway and, being unable to see anything, we quickly walked up to Derby Road to the St. Barnabas Roman Catholic Cathedral before going to take a good look at the Park Tunnel. 

 

A section through cross-bedding in the roof of the Park Tunnel

 

This provides outstanding examples of the various lithologies and sedimentary structures – particularly the three dimensional views of the cross-bedding - found in the Chester Formation, which I thought would be the highlight of the day and we spent 25 minutes looking at these. 

 

A pebble of metaquartzite

 

From part of the exposure hidden behind bushes, I pulled out a loose pebble of purple metaquartzite that is thought to be derived from the Armorican Massif - in what is now Brittany in north-west France. Along with pebbles of white vein quartz, I had found pebbles of this in the Quaternary glaciofluvial gravels in Doncaster, but this was the first sample that I had obtained directly from the Triassic bedrock. 

 

A group photo by Anne Fowles at Park Terrace

Ascending the central stairwell, where the Permian Bulwell stone has been used to build the retaining walls, we stopped to have a group photograph taken outside a house by the eminent Nottingham architect Thomas Chambers Hine, before continuing along Park Terrace. 

 

Sandstone Caves of Nottingham by Tony Waltham

 

Here we stopped for a few minutes to discuss the various caves that have been excavated beneath some of the houses here. Although not usually accessible by the general public, since the recce I had purchased the excellent booklet - Sandstone Caves of Nottingham - by Tony Waltham, which has photographs and diagrams of some of these ornamental caves. 

 

Inspecting the Ancaster limestone on Lenton Road

 

At the end of Park Terrace, we descended the Park Steps and went to have a look at further exposures of the Chester Formation on Lenton Road and, on the opposite side of the road, a few members used their hand lenses to examine the ooliths in the Ancaster limestone that has been used to build the retaining wall. 

 

The Chester Formation on Castle Road

 

Continuing past Castle Rock, we were all very tempted to have a quick half at Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem but, with the permission of the landlord, we instead went to have a quick look at the upstairs bar and rooms, which are excavated into the sandstone – with a promise that the next time we were in Nottingham, we would stay for a drink – before having lunch on Castle Road, opposite the bronze sculptures of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. 

 

In the Nottingham Contemporary

 

After lunch, we made our way to the Nottingham Contemporary art gallery to look at the current exhibition - Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & The Subterranean Imaginary – and browse in the shop, before heading along High Pavement to look at the various sandstones in the County Gaol, the adjoining Shire Hall and then St. Mary’s church, which I made sure we saw before it closed. 

 

Outside the entrance to the Shire Hall

 

When I previously visited the interior of the church, it was being prepared for a service and chairs had been laid out along the nave and I just took a quick set of general record photographs. I hadn’t realised that during the C19 investigation of structural problems, the remains of the earlier Norman church were discovered – including parts of columns upon which the Perpendicular Gothic arcade had been laid. 

 

Norman masonry beneath the Perpendicular Gothic arcade

 

Moving on down to Hollow Stone, we had a quick look at a series of small excavated cellars that I had discovered during online research since the recce, before heading along Bellar Gate and up Plumptre Street - to have a good look at the various multi-storey warehouses and workshops that are at the heart of the rejuvenated Lace Market district of Nottingham. 

 

An outcrop of the Chester Formation on Hollow Stone

 

Many of these very impressive red brick buildings have been demolished, but there are still many examples with their Ancaster stone dressings and elaborately carved surrounds to the entrances, which architects such as Hine and Watson Fothergill were employed to design and reflect the prosperity of their owners. 

 

At No.12 Plumptre Street

 

By this stage of the field trip, we had visited all of the rock outcrops and nearly all of the historic buildings that I wanted the group to see, so we had a very leisurely stroll around Stoney Street - stopping every now and again to further examine the Ancaster limestone with our hand lenses and to admire the fine details. 

 

Views of the Lace Market

 

Taking a break from leading the group, while still close at hand if anyone had any queries, I set about taking photographs of various buildings for the British Listed Buildings website, which were on our route back to Old Market Square, before we finished for the day at the former Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Bank (1882) - considered to be the finest work by Watson Fothergill. 

 

A detail of a doorway on Warser Gate

 

St. Mary's Church Ecclesfield Revisited

 

A grotesque at St. Mary's church

During my walk from Grenoside to Ecclesfield, via Whitley, I had a very quick walk around the churchyard and the exterior of St. Mary’s church, which I had visited back in October 2016 to take a comprehensive set of photos while it was open, but were lost due to the failure of the external hard drive on which they had been stored. 

 

The Jeffcock Memorial Fountain

 

On that occasion, it was very overcast but this time the sun was shining brightly and I took advantage of this to photograph the Jeffcock Memorial Fountain (1903) and the water trough dedicated to Thomas William Jeffcock, which between them exhibit three types of granite. 

 

The Thomas William Jefferson water trough

The Jeffcocks were a large and prominent local family of colliery owners and mining engineers, who originally moved in the C17 from Eckington to Handsworth, where there is also a Grade II Listed granite water tough and drinking fountain dedicated to them. 

 

Ecclesfield war memorial

 

These were relocated from elsewhere in Ecclesfield and, together with the old village stocks, the tomb of Alexander John Scott - the chaplain to Horatio Nelson at the time of his death at the Battle of Trafalgar - and the unusual Portland stone war memorial by R.B. Brooks-Greaves, in the form of a four-sided wheel-head cross with Celtic style knotwork, make the churchyard worth visiting. 

 

The south elevation of St. Mary's church

 

Looking at the south elevation from a distance in the bright afternoon sunshine, the overall colour of the sandstone confirmed my thoughts that I had about its provenance back in 2016, when I thought that it would have been Grenoside Sandstone brought from the nearby village of Grenoside, which is the type locality for this formation.

 

The south porch

 

Approaching the south porch, where the accumulated dirt and patina has weathered away, the fresh surface of the sandstone appears quite yellow, which is one of the physical characteristics of the Grenoside Sandstone that distinguishes it from the other Pennine Coal Measures Formation sandstones in Sheffield. 

 

Weathered Grenoside Sandstone to the porch

 

I didn’t spend much time looking at the fabric of the exterior of the church, which was built between 1488 and 1500 in a late Perpendicular Gothic style, but I was interested to see ‘honest repairs’ in a couple of places, as advocated by SPAB (Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings), which I had seen at churches in Treeton, Todwick and Whiston amongst others. 

An 'honest repair'

On the porch and south aisle, the afternoon sunshine highlighted the spectacular grotesque figures that are in the form of short flying buttresses, which link the aisle walls to tall square columns that rise to form pinnacles. 

 

Various grotesques

 

After first visiting St. Mary's church, I had since seen similar features only at All Saints church in Silkstone, where many of them had been replaced in the C19 and with modern forms, presumably depicting former vicars, which are carved in Permian dolomitic limestone. 

 

A highly weathered grotesque

 

Some of these, including one on the north-east corner that appears to be limestone, are so heavily weathered that their original form can be barely determined, as with many of the limestone grotesques at Aston and Laughton-en-le-Morthen, but the similarities of the grotesques between the two churches is quite remarkable. 

 

A limestone grotesque

 

All Saints church was also rebuilt towards the end of the C15 and completed in 1485, which makes me wonder if the same master mason had been employed in their design, particularly since during a recent visit to All Saints church in Darton, I had discovered that the same essential elements of its design was shared with churches in Royston, Cawthorne and Silkstone.

 

Various grotesques

 

A Further Exploration of Ecclesfield

 

A tourist information board in Ecclesfield

Leaving the hamlet of Whitley, having had a quick look at its historic buildings and a small roadside outcrop of the Penistone Flags, I set off across the fields along the public footpath with an original idea to go and look for the old Hunshelf Quarry. 

 

A view up to the escarpment of the Penistone Flags

 

Descending into a vale cut by a stream into the underlying Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation (PLCMF) mudstones, with a sharp rise up to an escarpment formed by a thin band of the Penistone Flags, I didn’t consider it worth the effort to go searching for an old quarry that might now be very overgrown and followed another path to Whitley Lane and continued along this until I eventually reached Church Street. 

 

A boundary wall on Church Street

 

Passing a few stone built C19 terraced and interwar semi-detached houses of no great merit, I encountered a long boundary wall that was originally built in thinly bedded silty sandstone that is now deeply weathered, upon which several courses of a more massive and durable PLCMF sandstone has been added. 

 

A sculpture by Andrew Vickers

 

Into this has been set a very abstract carved face, which is an early example of the work of Sheffield based artist Andrew Vickers of Stoneface Creative, whose various sculptures I have seen in many places across the city.

 

St. Mary's church

 

I had last visited Ecclesfield in October 2016, to take advantage of the opening of St. Mary’s church, but all of my photographs of its exterior and interior were lost when my external hard drive unexpectedly failed and I went to have another quick look at its exterior and churchyard, which I shall describe in my next post.

 

A private memorial in Ecclesfield cemetery

 

Ecclesfield cemetery is next to the church and I went to have a quick look to see if I could find any Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones, but the seven of these are all made in Portland stone and none belong to regiments that I had not seen before; however, a private headstone with some interesting coloured decoration caught my eye, as well as a slab made in grey Cornish granite with large phenocrysts. 

 

A Cornish granite grave slab

 

Having had a good chat with a local, who told me some interesting things about the area, I returned to Town End Road and took photographs of a few older buildings that are built with a yellowish sandstone that is probably Grenoside Sandstone. 

 

Various buildings on Town End Road

 

Making my way back to Church Street, I came a cross the first of a few listed buildings that I wanted to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website – the early C19 red brick Nos. 8 and 10 – before continuing along High Street to the former cruck barn attached to the south end of No. 35 St Mary's Lane. 

 

The former cruck barn attached to No. 35 St. Mary's Lane

 

A little further down High Street is the filemakers' manufactory immediately to the north-west of No.11. As with many of the small villages on the outskirts of Sheffield, Ecclesfield was the home to various industries, including scythe makers, nail makers and paper and corn mills. 

 

The former file manufactory

As I continued along High Street, the sky began to darken menacingly and, having photographed a few more unlisted historic buildings that are again probably built with Grenoside Sandstone from Grenoside, the heavens opened. 

 

Various buildings on High Street

I had to take shelter for several minutes before I was able to continue along High Street to find the nearest bus stop, from which I would catch a No. 83 bus back to Sheffield after another very good walk of more than 8 km.

 

My walk from Grenoside to Ecclesfield via Whitley