A Walk From Trap Lane to Greystones

 

A view of St. John's church in Ranmoor

Leaving Trap Lane behind me, I headed down Whiteley Wood Road and briefly stopped to photograph the house at the entrance to Meadow Farm, which looks more like a later Victorian lodge to a large country house than a farmhouse. 

 

The farmhouse at Meadow Farm

 

At the time I didn’t look at the stonework but, from my photographs, I can see that that there are at least two phases of construction, with the original part of the house being built in thinly bedded sandstone that looks to me like Rough Rock. The newer masonry is more massive and is quite grey in colour, with many of the blocks having orange to dark rusty brown colouration – a variation that is similar to the sandstone seen at Bents Green House. 

 

The former Methodist chapel on Whiteley Wood Road

 

A little further down the hill is the former Methodist chapel (1789), erected by Mary Mitchell and Sarah Hutton, the daughters of Thomas Boulsover - the inventor of Sheffield plate, who has a memorial at the nearby Wire Mill Dam. It is built in a Coal Measures sandstone, which is buff/light brown in colour with pronounced iron staining and Liesegang rings and quite different to the sandstones that I had already seen during my walk. 

 

The former Methodist chapel on Whiteley Wood Road

 

The next stage of my walk proved to be more complicated than it should have been, having found the public footpath further down Whiteley Wood Road, but I managed to lose the path and found myself criss crossing the fields and encountering various barriers to my progress. 

 

Views when searching for the public footpath to Whiteley Woods

 

Retracing my steps back to the public footpath where it crosses Bluebell Wood Brook, I eventually got back on the right track and encountered various dry stone walls and gateposts – some without walls attached – that made me further wonder where the sandstones were sourced and how they got there, in the days when transport was by horse and cart along poor unmade roads. 

 

Yellow clay on the footpath

 

Following the path through Whiteley Woods, which is set on the siltstones and mudstones beneath the Loxley Edge Rock, in a couple of places I found yellow clay along the path, which is formed by the weathering of mudstone, and a couple of man-made exposures. 

 

A man-made exposure of weathered mudstone

 

Apart from the remains of boundary walls, the only sandstone that I could find was in the form of loose fragments that I presume are derived from the upper slopes. The samples that I collected without my Estwing hammer are fine grained, light muddy grey/brown in colour with orange iron staining in the body of the stone and on weathered surfaces. 

 

Samples of sandstone from Whiteley Woods

 

Following the path through the allotments to Highcliffe Road, I then walked down the hill to Greystones Road and continued past the site of old quarry in the Crawshaw Sandstone, which I have since discovered on Google Map still has a visible face, until I reached High Storrs Rise – where Hornby Court was built on another quarry on the Loxley Edge Rock. 

 

The 1885 Ordnance Survey map of Greystones

 

On the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, this quarry is marked on the edge of the hamlet of Greystones, which grew around the late C18 Greystones Hall and it is therefore very probable that it supplied the stone for all of the houses here and some of the surrounding area.

 

Various historic buildings on Greystones Road

 

Most of the buildings on Greystones Road have been demolished but, on the south side of the road, there is a cluster of buildings that includes Hornby House, Hornby Cottage and a terrace of houses, which clearly show the character of what I presume to be the Loxley Edge Rock. 

 

Hornby Cottage

 

The sandstone used for the walling is massive, but is face bedded where used for the quoins and lintels and is quite clearly distinguishable from both the Greenmoor Rock and what I presume to be the Rough Rock, which I had seen earlier on my walk. Although slightly dirty, the sandstone is quite grey, which might account for the name of the hamlet, with often sharp variation to orange/brown and dark rusty brown – a characteristic that I had seen around Wadsley, Worrall and Oughtibridge, where the Loxley Edge Rock is very coarse grained. 

 

The north-west elevation of Greystones Hall

The last building on my list to photograph for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge was the Grade II Listed Greystones Hall, where there are only very limited views of the various facades from the surrounding roads.

 

The north-east elevation of Greystones Hall

 

The principal north-east elevation is built with uniformly coloured large ashlar blocks, which is quite grey in colour but, unlike that used on the north-west elevation, I don’t think this is Loxley Edge Rock and needs further investigation; however, on this occasion, I just took a few record photographs before heading back to Ecclesall Road to finish a good walk of over 8 km. 

 

My walk from Banner Cross to Greystones

A Walk From Bents Green to Trap Lane

 

An interwar sandstone house on Trap Lane

Setting off from Bents Green Methodist Church, having walked from Banner Cross via Ecclesall, the route for the last last leg of my day out was planned to enable me to photograph the last four listed buildings for my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge. 

 

Views of High Storrs School

First on my list was the Grade II Listed High Storrs School (1933) - built in red brick with artificial stone dressings - and the separately listed boundary walls, railings and gates, which were designed by the Sheffield city architect W.G. Davies, who was also responsible for Sheffield Central Library (1934). 

 

A map of the Porter Valley Woodlands Nature Reserve

 

Using an extract from the 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map to guide me around the Porter Valley Woodlands Nature Reserve, I eventually arrived at Trap Lane and carried on past Muskoka Drive without taking much notice of my surroundings, but was stopped in my tracks by a series of placards outside a fine example of an interwar semi-detached house. 

 

Placards on Trap Lane

 

As a geologist with specialist interests in building stone, my day had been spent taking a good look at every stone building and boundary wall that I passed but, once I started reading these placards, I forgot all about this and instead found myself nodding in agreement to each statement that rallied against the insane policies of ‘Trussonomics’. 

 

Placards on Trap Lane

This really made my day and, after hanging around in the hope that the owner of the house might notice me, I was very tempted to knock on the door to congratulate the author on both the sentiments and the incredibly neat way that they have been presented. 

 

Trussonomics

 

Laughing to myself as I continued along Trap Lane, I later got home to discover that Liz Truss had announced her decision to resign – having trashed the UK economy and leaving a legacy of being the shortest-serving prime minister in the country's history, with the lowest rate of approval ever. 

 

A panoramic view of the Porter Valley

Stopping to take in the panoramic views over the Porter Valley, I continued along Trap Lane for a short distance, when it suddenly turned from a tarmac surfaced road into an old track that, in a few places, has small exposures of the Loxley Edge Rock poking out from it. 

 

Exposures of the Loxley Edge Rock on Trap Lane

A little further down the track, I was interested to see a strongly flowing stream coming down through the woodland, which filled a water trough and continued as a ford before entering a culverted section and then disappearing beneath the flagstone path and adjoining wall. 

 

A ford on Trap Lane

I was very pleasantly surprised by the rapid change from a soulless interwar suburban housing estate into an idyllic rural scene such as this, with only the modern electronic communications mast at Meadow Lane Farm spoiling the view.

Meadow Lane Farm

 

A Walk From Ecclesall to Bents Green

 

A datestone at No. 42 Knowle Lane

Carrying on from my walk from Banner Cross to Ecclesall, where I had a good look at the sandstones used in the Listed Buildings and various boundary walls, I took a short cut to Ecclesall Road South through All Saints churchyard. 

 

An ornate white marble table tomb

 

A large elaborately carved table tomb made of white marble, probably from Carrara in the Apuan Alps of Italy, immediately caught my eye. Getting close up, the marble can be seen to be deeply weathered and in places the loss of its surface is such that calcite veins stand out proud. 

 

The tomb of Henry Clifton Sorby

 

I had briefly visited the churchyard back in September 2018, to find the tomb of Henry Clifton Sorby – the pioneer of using a microscope to study rocks – and went to have another look at the pink Peterhead and grey Cornish granites that have been used to build it. 

 

The headstone of Lieutenant J.A. Sorby

Not far from this, I came across the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone of Lieutenant J.A. Sorby of the Australian Field Artillery, but I don’t know if the two are closely related. The headstone is a replacement of the Portand stone original and is made with Glenaby granite, from Lanhélin in Brittany, with the regimental crest and inscription cut with a CNC milling machine – a technique that has superseded carving by hand. 

 

The Australian Field Artillery regimental crest

I stopped very briefly to look at the north transept of All Saints church, which was added along with a matching transept to the south and a large chancel by Temple Moore (1906-1908), a London based architect who was responsible for many Gothic Revival churches and restorations during the late C19 and early C20. 

 

The north transept of All Saints church

The original church (1789) was remodelled in 1843, including the raising of the tower to its current height, but except to note the use of gritstone that I thought was probably Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley, I didn’t pay much attention to the sandstone in the rest of the church. 

 

Sandstone used for the north transept of All Saints church

 

Having since spent 21 months photographing the historic architecture and building stones of Sheffield, visiting old quarries and natural rock exposures wherever possible, I suspect that this could be quarried from the Rough Rock; however, unlike the other principal sandstone formations on the west side of Sheffield – the Chatsworth Grit, Crawshaw Sandstone, Loxley Edge Rock, Greenmoor Rock and Grenoside Sandstone – I have not yet seen any documentation that identifies the Rough Rock as having been used in any particular building. 

 

A sandstone house and boundary wall on Knowle Lane

Continuing my walk along Ecclesall Road South, I turned up Knowle Lane, where the area from here to Ringinglow Road was developed from approximately 1926 to 1935 with almost exclusively brick built semi-detached and detached houses. The boundary walls are built in a sandstone that is quite coarse grained and has sharp grey to orange colour variation – a physical characteristic that I had seen in both the Chatsworth Grit and Loxley Edge Rock.

 

Boundary walls on Knowle Lane

 

The area around Bents and Green and Greystones is actually underlain by the Loxley Edge Rock which, according to the Sheffield Area Geology Trust is finer-grained, less massive and more flaggy and was only worked for local building stone and is a common feature of garden walls.

 

Active and disused quarries marked on the 1924 Ordnance Survey map

 

The 1934 Ordnance Survey map (revised 1920) shows that all but one of the Greystones Cliff quarries have closed, the Bents Green quarry is also closed, but that a quarry on an unnamed Pennines Lower Coal Measures Formation sandstone at Silverdale Road in Ecclesall is still operating; however, to determine the source of the sandstones used for the interwar phase of house building, documentary evidence is required. 

 

A geological map with the locations of old quarries

Two pairs of stone built semi-detached houses at Nos. 42-48, dating to 1926, are built in a style that is more like an Edwardian villa style and is quite different to that seen in the later 1930’s housing developments found in the suburbs of Sheffield.

 

Nos. 42 and 44 Knowle Lane

Knowle Lane follows the line of the southernmost extent of a small plateau of the Loxley Edge Rock and, when turning down to Haugh Lane, the escarpment that it forms is here quite noticeable in a suburban landscape where there are no open green spaces. 

 

Views of No. 25 Haugh Lane

Making my way down Haugh Lane past more large white painted 1930’s houses, I came to the Grade II Listed No. 25 Haugh Lane, a house and attached former coach house that is dated by Historic England to the early C18. 

 

Views of No. 31 Haugh Lane

 

Looking from the pavement, I could see that walling and the quoins are made from the same sandstone, which varies from grey to dark rusty brown in colour and reminds me of much of the stonework that I had previously seen when investigating the geology and historic architecture around Fulwood – and the same pattern was seen at No 31 Haugh Lane. 

 

Bents Green House

 

Reaching the junction with Bents Road, I photographed the Grade II Listed Bents Green House (1828), without taking a close look at the greyish looking stonework, before heading up Bents Road to have a quick look at the unlisted Bents Green Methodist Church. 

 

Bents Green Methodist Church

 

This was designed by the architect W.J. Hale, whose work I had seen at the Wesley Hall, St. Luke’s church and the Congregational Church in Crookes, Sheffield Board Schools at Bole Hill, Lydgate Lane and Hammerton Street and Rawmarsh Methodist Church, but he died before it was finished and the church was completed in 1931 by G.R. Bower. 

 

A detail of the coarse sandstone at Bents Green Methodist Church

The walling of the church and the lower course of the railings is built with a coarse grained sandstone with a grey/orange colour variation and occasional pebbles, which is probably Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley. The coping stones and capping stones to the piers on the boundary wall are artificial stone, with an aggregate of large angular fragments of sandstone. 

 

An artificial stone capping to a gate pier

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