A Walk From Lea Road to High Street

 

A grotesque on the Peel Monument

 

Since arriving on the No. 44 bus in Coal Aston, it had taken taken just 2 hours to photograph its listed buildings and then walk to Dronfield, where I photographed another 6 listed buildings and had a look at some of its geology on Mill Lane and Chesterfield Road. 

 

The Forge shopping centre

Starting at Lea Road Bridge on the last leg of my walk, I set off along Lea Road and stopped very briefly at The Forge shopping centre, which comprises converted buildings that formed part of a forge that was last worked by W.H. Butler and Sons from 1922 to 1996, but has buildings on the site that can be dated back to 1527. 

 

Views of Vale House

 

The first of the remaining 9 buildings on my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge was the Grade II Listed Grade House, which dates back to the late C17, with C19 and C20 alterations and additions. As with the buildings in Chesterfield Road, I could only glimpse Vale House over the boundary wall and carried on past a Methodist chapel, which is now the Core Community Church. 

 

The Core Community Church

 

Next to this is Grade II Listed The Manse (c.1800) and a little further along the road is another house with a similar design and of a similar age, which was occupied by the Royal Bank of Scotland before being converted into the Bank House Apartments. 

 

The Manse and Bank House apartments

 

Winding my way up Church Street, the partially rendered C17 Green Dragon public house was my next stop, but there isn’t much of interest for this Language of Stone Blog and I went to have another look at the Church of St. John the Baptist, before continuing up Church Street. 

 

The Green Dragon

 

Continuing past the Old Rectory (1809), which I am surprised is not a listed building, two pairs of early C19 gatepiers are listed for their group value in the Conservation Area, with Historic England describing them as “Ashlar sandstone square on plan, with rusticated V-jointing. The piers support voussoired segmental arches, above which is a plain ashlar flat coping”. 

 

Gatepiers on Church Street

The adjoining Grade II Listed house (1804) - identified by Historic England as Premises Occupied by the Slinn Computer Group - and the Old Grammar School, which dates back to at least the C17, provide further examples of the locally quarried Silkstone Rock but neither of them possess great architectural merit. 

 

Slinn Computers and the Old Grammar School

 

Passing the Red House (1731) and the early C18 Old Vicarage, which are very unusual in Dronfield because they are built with brick, Church Street turns at a right angle into High Street and continues up a more gentle slope. 

 

1898 Ordnance Survey map

 

Looking at the 1898 Ordnance Survey map, the mediaeval street plan and burgage plots can be clearly seen, but very little remains of Wards Yard and Post Yard, with the modern buildings and car parks around the civic centre now dominating the area. 

 

Various buildings on High Street

 

Continuing along High Street past the town hall and various shops that have no particular architectural merit, I stopped briefly to photograph the mid C17 Manor Hotel before taking a diversion to the Grade II* Listed Dronfield Hall Barn – a community venue with attractive grounds that is well worth visiting. 

 

Views of Dronfield Hall Barn and its grounds

There was no exhibition on in the gallery, which is located on the upper floor where there is a good king post roof, so I just had quick look around the garden and took photographs of the Grade II Listed boundary wall at the back of various houses on High Street.

 

The Cottage

Returning to High Street, I could obtain a partial view of The Cottage through the gates of the adjacent Hall and continued up the road to the Peel Monument (1854), which was erected as a tribute to Sir Robert Peel, to commemorate the repeal of the Corn Laws. 

 

The Peel Monument

 

On my previous visit to Dronfield, I only took a couple of photos from a distance and so I went to take a closer look at the grotesques on the monument, which is made from very coarse grained pebbly sandstone that is probably the Chatsworth Grit. 

 

The Peel Monument

 

Having been unable to get a view of the last building on my Photo Challenge, Rookery Cottage, I carried on to the library to browse through quite an extensive local history section, but I didn’t have time to sit down and read any of the publications. 

 

Dronfield library

 

At the end of a thoroughly enjoyable walk, I photographed Dronfield war memorial, which is made of the veined ‘Sicilian’ variety of Italian Carrara marble before taking advantage of the Sainsbury’s supermarket on Wreakes Lane and then catching the No. 43 bus back to Sheffield. 

 

Dronfield war memorial

Geology in Dronfield

 

A rock face on Chesterfield Road

When planning my day out to Coal Aston and Dronfield, I referred to the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT) website, where a lengthy description of the Silkstone Rock mentions various rock exposures on the east side of Chesterfield Road and Sheffield Road, some of which I had found using Google Map Street View. 

 

Exposures of the Silkstone Rock on Green Lane and Mill Lane

 

Having unexpectedly encountered an old quarry and a very small outcrop on Green Lane and a few other quarry faces on Mill Lane, which I have since discovered are included in one of the Dronfield Geological Walkabouts that were produced by Mike Romano for the Dronfield Heritage Trust, I looked forward to trying to find those identified by SAGT. 

 

A rock face on Chesterfield Road

 

After photographing Lea Road Bridge from the footbridge at Dronfield railway station, I continued north along the east side of Chesterfield Road and was very surprised when passing various converted shops and a new apartment block and a roadside cottage to see a small section of a rock face that was currently being cleared of vegetation. 

 

Cross-bedding in the Silkstone Rock

 

I didn't ask if I could take a closer look and take a sample, but my photos show that the Silkstone Rock is strongly cross-bedded here. I have wondered if this and other rock faces marked along the east side of the valley might relate to road widening rather than commercial quarrying, especially since there is another rock exposure to the rear of a yard behind No. 1 Sheffield Road. 

 

No. 1 Sheffield Road

 

The 1854 edition of the 6” Ordnance Survey (OS) map shows a small quarry on Snape Hill Lane, which is not shown on the 1898 1:25,000 scale map, but both maps show another larger quarry further north along Sheffield Road - near a place named Alma. 

 

A quarry marked on the 1898 Ordnance Survey map

Firstly asking permission from the receptionist at Banner Jones Solicitors to have a quick look at this small outcrop that I could see from the footpath, I proceeded to discreetly obtain a couple of small samples of sandstone with my Estwing hammer. 

 

An outcrop to the rear of No. 1 Sheffield Road

The specimens are fine grained and strongly iron stained, with weathered out small elongated clay ironstone pellets and the development of dense thin bands of ironstone. The Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation strata associated with the Silkstone Rock typically have a very high iron content, which often develops into seams that were extensively mined wherever they occurred in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. 

 

Specimens of Silkstone Rock

 

50 m further along Sheffield Road, I was very interested in a grand looking set of steps, with iron bollards to the entrance, which I later learned connects to Snape Hill Lane. What most caught my eye was the pile of thick sandstone slabs that have been laid out next to the boundary wall of  a now demolished Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, which is shown on the 1898 OS map.

A set of steps leading to Snape Hill Road

My curiously got the better of me and I ventured for a few metres up the steps, which is marked on the current OS map as a public footpath, to see an open green space that, at its north-eastern extremity, my photo shows as having another rock face exposed behind the trees and shrubs. 

 

A green space with a rock face obscured by trees

 

Continuing to Snape Hill Lane, I looked for the rock exposure mentioned by SAGT – photographed in 2012 - but I couldn’t see any rock exposures and suspect that this might lie beneath the very thick vegetation that has encroached its irregular north bank at the junction with Sheffield Road. 

 

An overgrown quarry face next to the former Nawabs Brasserie

 

From this point onwards, Sheffield Road no longer retains its Victorian character and is partly lined with some quite large C20/C21 retail buildings and I quickly carried on to the exposure that SAGT said was next to an Indian restaurant. It is quite overgrown and, being conscious that I still had several listed buildings to visit for my Photo Challenge, I just took a couple of photos before returning to Lea Road. 

 

A detail of the quarry face

 

Quoit Green and Chesterfield Road

 

A comemoration of the coal mining and rail manufacturing industries

After photographing Quoit Green House, at the end of my walk from Green Lane to Quoit Green, I retraced my steps down Hallowes Lane and turned into Quoit Green and stopped to have a quick look at No. 14, which has been cleaned and reveals the characteristics of the Silkstone Rock. 

 

No. 14 Quoit Green

 

This formation underlies most of central Sheffield and outcrops in the Sheffield Midland railway station cutting, but I have never knowingly seen this used as a building stone in the city. Although I had seen various historic buildings in Coal Aston, most were blackened to an extent and this partially obscures the orange iron staining of the sandstone.

 

The old police station

 

On the corner of Quoit Green and Cross Lane, which are within the south-eastern part of the Dronfield Conservation Area, I was interested to see a very unassuming building, whose purpose is inscribed above the door in the word CONSTABULARY and has iron bars on the windows of the cells in the side extension. 

 

A detail of the cell window at the old police station

 

It is built with planar bedded sandstone, which looks different to the typical Silkstone Rock, with dressings of massive pinkish gritstone – of a type that has been described as Matlock Stone, where used for a handful of Sheffield Board Schools. 

 

Views of Rose Hill

Returning to Chesterfield Road, the next building on my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge was Rose Hill on Princess Road, together with its boundary walls. The Derbyshire Historic Environment Record mentions that this early C17 Grade II Listed house was rebuilt in 1719 by the lead merchant Robert Greenwood, who took advantage of Dronfield being on the established trade route to the inland port of Bawtry. 

 

Views of Chiverton House

 

The nearby Grade II* Chiverton House and its south-east and south-west outbuildings, like Rose Hill, is set in large grounds and I could only get glimpses of this C17 house, with alterations in 1712 and the C19 and the best view that I had was from the footbridge at Dronfield railway station.

 

A view of Chiverton House from the Dronfield railway station footbridge

 

From here, I also had a good view of the Grade II Listed Lea Road Bridge, part of the complex multi-arch L-shaped masonry bridge structure built in 1870 for the Midland Railway Chesterfield to Sheffield line, to the designs of the railway company's Engineer-in-Chief J.S. Crossley. 

 

A view of Lea Road Bridge

 

On my previous visit to Dronfield, I alighted from the No. 43 bus from Sheffield at Sainsbury’s on Wreakes Lane and walked down High Street and Church Street to the Church of St. John the Baptist, where the character of this historic market town is essentially mediaeval. 

 

The Chesterfield Road section of the Lea Road Bridge

 

I didn’t get further than the T-junction with Lea Road and therefore didn't see the post Industrial Revolution part of Dronfield - where foundries, forges, toolmakers and collieries, grew up alongside the River Dron, the old A61 road from Derby to Ripon and the railway line. 

 

A detail of the Chesterfield road section of the Lea Road Bridge

 

Continuing along Chesterfield Road past the ramped section of Lea Road Bridge, many of the stone built roadside houses that continue to Sheffield Road are now used for various commercial uses, but none of them are listed and I crossed over the road to take a closer look at a landscaped green space that is set next to the railway line. 

 

Commercial premises on Chesterfield Road

The Millstone Grit archway here once formed the entrance to a foundry established in 1790 by Edward Lucas and Son Ltd. According to the commemorative plaque, Edward Lucas patented (1804) a method of producing malleable iron castings that was based on his work at this foundry.

 

The site of the Edward Lucas & Son foundry

  

A Walk From Green Lane to Quoit Green

 

An old quarry on Mill Lane

My very quick exploration of Coal Aston - primarily to complete a Photo Challenge that comprised 6 listed buildings - ended at the beginning of Green Lane, where the scarp slope of the Silkstone Rock turns into a dip slope on the northern limb of the Dronfield Syncline. 

 

Listed buildings in the Drone Valley

 

My plan for the next leg of my Photo Challenge was to walk down to Chesterfield Road, which together with the Midland Railway and the River Drone runs along the hinge line of the syncline, before carrying on up the other side of the valley to Quoit Green House – a distance of 1.5 km. 

 

The topography of Dronfield

 

Having consulted old Ordnance Survey (OS) maps when researching my day out, I knew that there wasn’t much to see and for the most part of the walk down Green Lane but, starting with some good views over the Drone Valley, there were a few highlights in a suburban area that is dominated by C20 housing of various styles. 

 

A view down Green Lane

 

Walking down the west side of the road, I passed various boundary walls that are presumably built with the Silkstone Rock but, except to photograph one section where both the iron stained sandstone with Liesegang rings and lime mortar are weathered, I didn’t stop to look at them. 

 

A boundary wall on Green Lane

 

Just beyond Derwent Road, I had a very quick look at a sandstone house that appears on the 1883 OS map, which is built with the same kind of sandstone and appears to have an old quarry face to the rear of it, but it is not marked as such on any of the maps. 

 

A house and an old quarry on Green Lane

Continuing past the junction with Snape Hill Lane, my next brief stop was to photograph a small Edwardian detached house, which has thinly coursed rock-faced sandstone walling with red brick quoins and window dressings, with a short terrace of Victorian houses just beyond it. 

 

Edwardian and Victorian houses on Green Lane

 

On the opposite side of the road are a few pairs of Edwardian villas, where the entrances have been landscaped with large angular blocks of sandstone, which remind me of the later Victorian houses on Fulwood Road in Sheffield. 

 

Large blocks of sandstone used for garden landscaping

From here, I just carried on down the hill through an area that is dominated by a small modern shopping precinct and the Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School, before reaching a section of the road that is bounded by high walls that belonged to the Victorian Dronfield School and Cliff House. 

 

A rock outcrop on Green Lane

 

At the junction with Callywhite Lane, I very pleased to find a very small exposure of thinly bedded Silkstone Rock at the junction of the boundary wall and the pavement. As a geologist, I always like to find an outcrop of rock when I least expect it and, on this occasion, I think that the field geologist at the British Geological Survey must have measured his 2 degree dip to the SSE here. 

 

The River Drone

 

Crossing a busy junction where three roads meet, on Chesterfield Road I took a quick photos of the channelled River Drone and followed it along Mill Lane, where I encountered a quite substantial quarry that again isn’t marked on the OS map.

 

An old quarry on Mill Lane

 

The River Drone reappears alongside the south side of the road and various small works have been built next to it, with small bridges linking their entrances with the road. This channelled section continues east under the railway bridge down to an area where the 1898 OS map marks the Dronfield Works, which made shovels, a gas works and the Dronfield corn mill. 

 

The River Drone on Mill Lane

 

Another quarry face with a Victorian cottage built next to it can be seen immediately to the south of the railway line and to the north of this, which I didn’t explore, there is now a large industrial estate on a site that was once occupied by a steel works and Dronfield Silkstone Colliery. 

 

An old quarry with a cottage on Mill Lane

 

Finding a cut-through to Chesterfield Road, I made my way up Hallowes Lane to Quoit Green House, a large house that is dated 1613 and incorporates elements of an earlier building, with remodelling in the late C18 and further alterations and extensions in the C20.

 

Quoit Green House