Planning a Day Out to Horbury & Ossett

 

A worksheet for my day out to Horbury and Ossett

After a very slow start to 2024 due to the very wet weather, although I did manage to get out to Cressbrook Dale and Pilsley in the Peak District National Park, the first week of April was spent taking another look at the urban geology of Sheffield – an initial visit to Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park, a recce of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens and Ecclesall Road for the next Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip and a second visit to Wardsend Cemetery. 

 

A Google Map view of the country between Treeton and Horbury

 

For my next day out, I decided to visit the Grade I Listed Church of St. Peter and St. Leonard (1791-1793) in Horbury, by the pre-eminent architect of the C18 in the north of England, John Carr, who was born in the town and designed and financed this as his final resting place. 

 

The Building Stone Atlas of West & South Yorkshire

I had taken notice of a reference to this in the Building Stone Atlas of West & South Yorkshire, first published in 2012 as part of the Strategic Stone Study, when I was very interested to see that the very distinctive striped sandstone was described as being the Woolley Edge Rock, which I thought I had seen at Sandal Castle and St. Helen’s church in Sandal Magna and at Wakefield Cathedral and the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin in Wakefield. 

 

The Building Stones of England - West and South Yorkshire

The revised version produced by Historic England in 2023 as part of the Building Stones of England series, however, describes it as Horbury Rock. I have been very reliably informed that this was undertaken as a desk top study, which would explain some glaring errors and omissions, particularly for South Yorkshire - where I possess a very good working knowledge of its geology, building stones and historic buildings. 

 

The distribution of the Woolley Edge Rock around Wakefield

During my trip to Woolley the previous October, I had seen more examples of the Woolley Edge Rock in very many historic buildings in the village and at an old quarry on my walk from Wooley to Darton, where All Saints church is built from distinctly cross-bedded coarse grained sandstone that I think is from this formation. 

 

Listed buildings in Horbury

 

Although I had encountered several Victorian churches and a few Georgian churches on my travels, I had not made any effort to travel a long way to find them. In early 2023, when drawing up a long list of places to potentially visit in the year, a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Horbury showed that, except for the church, more than 20 buildings required a photograph but, by the time of my visit, all of these had been photographed by other people. 

 

Horbury and Ossett on Open Street Map

Being determined to visit Horbury anyway, I decided that I would also go and see Ossett, where the Grade II* Listed Church of the Holy Trinity forms a very prominent landmark that I had seen very many times when driving up the M1 motorway.

 

An extract from the No. 126 bus timetable

This was made easy by the fact that the No. 126 bus from Wakefield to Dewsbury runs every 15 minutes and the journey from Horbury to Ossett only takes 10 minutes and, entering a postcode for a Photo Challenge for Ossett, I found 4 buildings in Ossett and another in South Ossett. 

 

Listed buildings in Ossett

 

To make my day complete, I discovered that Horbury Quarry had been identified by the West Yorkshire Geology Trust as a Local Geological Site, where an expanse of the Horbury Rock is still visible and, after I had walked back from Ossett, I could get to it easily from a public footpath.  

The location of Horbury Quarry

Wardsend Cemetery Revisted

 

A view of headstones in the 1901 extension to Wardsend Cemetery

 

The day after my recce for a field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group - from the Sheffield Botanical Gardens to Endcliffe Park and Ecclesall Road - I returned to Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park to coincide with a gathering of volunteers who attend on a monthly basis to clear vegetation and undertake other practical tasks.

 

A view along the public footpath

Having made an arrangement with Howard, who I had briefly seen with Hugh earlier in the week, I was introduced to various people and then I set off to explore the part of the cemetery above the railway line, where 2 acres of land just below the outcrop of Greenmoor Rock was added in 1901.

Another view along the public footpath

I had passed through this part of the cemetery a couple of years earlier, when walking from Burngreave to Owlerton, when I was very surprised to see an area of scrubland full of traditional sandstone headstones, which from a distance looked liked others that I seen in various Victorian cemeteries in Sheffield.

 

Old quarries on Brincliffe Edge

 

All of these headstones, I have always presumed, are made from the variety of Greenmoor Rock known in Sheffield as Brincliffe Edge Rock, which was extracted from several quarries on Brincliffe Edge and along the escarpment down to Hunter’s Bar and Brocco Bank.

 

Headstones of Anne Biggin and Ernest Faulkner

 

The simple slabs of Anne Biggin (d.1906) and Ernest Faulkner (d.1940) have essentially identical designs, which are a complete break from the Gothic form and are more akin to the kerbed headstones of John Dyson (1931) and Henry Lindley (d.1933).

 

Headstones of John Dyson and Henry Lindley

 

I didn’t closely examine the sandstone used for any of these headstones, but my initial impression was that they are not locally quarried Brincliffe Edge Rock, which is very fine grained and has a very distinct blueish/greenish colour. By 1920, Stancliffe Darley Dale stone from the Ashover Grit had become a common material for Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones and Crosses of Sacrifice in South Yorkshire.

 

The kerbed headstone of Eliza and Robert Hooton

From the public footpath, I could see that the kerbed headstone of Eliza Hooton (d.1928) and her husband Robert (d.1928) is made of a stone that I immediately thought was white Carrara marble from Italy, which has lead lettering – including the abbreviation B&CCS, which marks this as the work of the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society.

The headstone commemorating members of the Austick family

Next to this is another white marble kerbed headstone, which commemorates Annie (d.1933) and her father Frederick Austick (d.1946) and his wife Ann (d.1958). Although I had my hand lens, steel penknife and bottle of hydrochloric acid in my rucksack, I didn’t think it necessary to apply these standard tests, to confirm its composition but, when enlarging my high resolution photos, I can see calcite veins in the marble that have been highlighted by weathering.

 

The headstone of Harriet Middleton

 

Behind these headstones is another white stone monument that commemorates Harriet Middleton (d.1936), which has inscribed lettering, but I didn’t attempt to get to it through the brambles and thick undergrowth; however, from my photos, I can see that it has a completely different texture, which weathered out shell fragments indicating that it is Portland limestone.

 

Carrara marble headstones obscured algae, moss and lichen

 

Without leaving the footpath, I could see various other headstones, dating from 1917 to 1955, which I thought were probably further examples of Carrara marble, but were partly obscured by red and green algae, moss and lichen and I can’t determine their texture from my photographs.

 

The memorial to William Else and his family

 

In addition to the sandstones, marble and limestone, I also encountered a few headstones that are made from various igneous rocks, with the most interesting being those that are made in gabbro, which are probably from the Bushveld Complex at Rustenburg in South Africa.

The memorial to members of the Newton family

One commemorates William Else (d. 1923) his wife Sarah (d.1929) and two infant children aged 3 weeks and 2 years, with the other dedicated to George Newton (d.1910), his mother Jane (d.1930) and his father Edward (d.1942).

The headstone of Tom Wharton

Another gabbroic headstone - a stone of unknown provenance marketed under the name black granite - is that of Tom Wharton (d.1933), an extremely dedicated fan of Sheffield Wednesday F.C. who was buried in an unmarked grave, but a crowd funding project, aimed at supporters of the club, enabled this to be made.

Grey granite memorials

Having spent over an hour looking at this upper section of the cemetery, I found a couple of medium grained grey granites that I didn’t inspect closely, but which may be Scottish, then got talking to Lynne, another committee member of the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery.

A plan of Wardsend Cemetery

Although we had never met before, I discovered that this was the same Lynne who had been sharing very many of my Language of Stone Blog posts that I had tweeted on the social media platform now known as X. Although the rest of the volunteers had packed in for the day, she kindly took me on a very quick tour of plots L to T.

The headstone of George Beaumont

Adjoining the path next to the railway line, the headstone – with a footstone depicting a football - records the accidental death of George Beaumont in 1877 who, when trying to retrieve a ball during a football match, climbed over a wall and fell to his death in the adjoining quarry.

The footstone of George Beaumont

Continuing to the headstone of Samuel Wood (d.1858) and his family, the use of Welsh slate is a great surprise, given that the best monumental grade Brincliffe Edge Rock was being produced in great quantities only 5 km away as the crow flies.

The headstone of Samuel Wood

My second very brief visit to Wardsend Cemetery ended with a quick look at the tomb of Charles Burgon (d.1894), of Burgon and Ball, which developed its reputation as a supplier of sheep shears and is still a leading manufacturer of garden tools.

The tomb of Charles Burgon

I just took a couple of quick general photographs of this and didn’t take much notice of the stone that it is made from but, looking at my photos of this very dirty tomb, it looks like that this could be another example of Kemnay granite.

A detail of the inscription on the Charles Burgon tomb

Endcliffe Park and Ecclesall Road

 

Outcrops of Greenmoor Rock in Endcliffe Park

When undertaking a recce for the April 2024 Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip, much of the planning for the day had already been done when preparing for the curtailed November 2023 meeting at Sheffield General Cemetery and while exploring Nether Edge and Ecclesall Road as part of various British Listed Buildings Photo Challenges in the Nether Edge and Sharrow and Broomhill and Sharrow Vale wards. 

 

The boundary wall on Botanical Road

 

Having visited Sheffield Botanical Gardens to identify several points of interest for the group, my next step was to decide on the route to Endcliffe Park, which I thought would be a good place to have our lunch and, after, leaving by the west entrance on Brocco Bank, its boundary wall on Botanical Road caught my eye. 

 

The geology around Brocco Bank

The Building Stones Database for England map explorer marks the road as following an outcrop of Grenoside Sandstone, but the wall is clearly built mainly of typically thin bedded Greenmoor Rock; however, judging by the very irregular nature of its lower part as seen from a distance, it looked liked the wall was built on an outcrop of sandstone. 

 

A detail of the boundary wall on Botanical Road

 

Getting much closer, I couldn’t determine any obvious continuous natural rock outcrop, but there are several large blocks of quite massive sandstone that seem to be incorporated in the foundations of a wall built with flaggy sandstone.

 

A boundary wall built with very thinly bedded flaggy sandstone

 

Continuing down the hill, the Greenmoor Rock in the boundary walls to the houses exhibit  that show various bed thicknesses and lithologies, which can be used to demonstrate the various flow regimes relating to the environment in which the Greenmoor Rock was deposited.

 

The entrance to the old Brocco Bank quarry

 

Approaching No. 23 Botanical Road, I was interested to see that the northern side of the drive to the house at its rear has a high wall, which looks like an old quarry face that has been faced to produce a basic retaining wall. The drive is still partially paved in a manner that I have seen in many approaches to old industrial sites and, later referring to the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, I discovered that this is the entrance to the former Brocco Bank Quarry. 

 

The location of Brocco Bank Quarry on the 1855 Ordnance survey map

 

The list of quarries produced by the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT), which is based on Hunt’s Mineral Statistics (1858), show that this is one of two quarries listed at Brocco Bank. It was owned by Thomas Broomhead and 2000 tons of stone were produced in this year – including flags, steps, heads, sills, gravestones, whitening stone and walling stone. 

 

The entrance to St. Augustine's church

 

By the time the 1894 edition was published, the quarry had become disused and several detached houses had been built in the area along the newly constructed Botanical Road and. The 1906 edition shows that St. Augustine’s church (1897) had been erected on the site, where small exposures of the Greenmoor Rock, which I had first encountered during a walk from Shepherds Wheel to Hunter's Bar, can be seen behind thick undergrowth on the site. 

 

The Porter Brook in Endcliffe Park

 

Before entering Endcliffe Park at Hunter’s Bar, I noted that the Porter Brook was at a much higher level than I had seen before and, keeping to the paths, I continued towards the Mi Amigo memorial to look at the small outcrops of Greenmoor Rock that occur in the hillside to the north of it.

 

The hillside to the north of the Mi Amigo memorial

 

On previous occasions when the ground was much drier, I had scrambled up the moderately steep slope to examine the small outcrops, which are mainly exposed amongst the tree roots, but this time I just took a few photos with the zoom lens on my Panasonic Lumix TZ100 camera.

 

Small outcrops of Greenmoor Rock

 

Having identified suitable places where we could take our lunch on the day of the field trip, I headed up Ecclesall Road. Passing various Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, which are all built with Greenmoor Rock that has a distinct green tinge, the last part of my recce was to check accessibility to the old quarry faces on the site of the former John Gregory brickworks.

 

Terraced houses on Ecclesall Road

 

The old quarry face on Marmion Road behind the car park to the Co-Op supermarket is readily accessible to the general public, but the south part of the exposure is occupied by a nursery and various shops and I wanted to notify them about the arrival of our group in the near future.

 

The old quarry face behind the Co-Op car park

The Greenmoor Rock here consists mainly of mudstone and this was exploited for brick making, as also seen at Neepsend, Chesterfield Road and Wadsley Bridge, although moderately thick beds of sandstone are seen in the upper sections.

 

The old quarry face at the southern end of Marmion Road

 

By this point, it had started to rain and, having already investigated the old quarries on Brincliffe Edge, I finished my recce here and caught the bus back to Sheffield. Having time before my bus to Treeton, I popped into Sheffield Central Library to see an exhibition of photos - LAND by Matthew Conduit - which included views of sites on the east coast of Yorkshire where alum had been quarried until the second half of the C19. 

 

Photos by Matthew Conduit at the LAND exhibition

 

A Recce in Sheffield Botanical Gardens

 

A block of coal in the Evolution Garden

For the November 2023 meeting of the Sheffield U3A Geology Group at the Sheffield General Cemetery, the plan for the afternoon was for me to lead the group from the Kenwood Hall Hotel through Nether Edge to Brincliffe Edge and then down Ecclesall Road to examine the Greenmoor Rock – here known as the Brincliffe Edge Rock – in quarry exposures and building stones.

 

The geology around Ecclesall Road and Nether Edge

Due to the cold weather, the day was cut short but, following the postponement of the April field trip to Alport Castles, which I had always considered to be badly thought out, I stepped forward to arrange a field trip that would include a walk around Nether Edge and an exploration of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens and Endcliffe Park.

 

A map of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens

Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, while exploring the Sheffield Board Schools and undertaking many British Listed Buildings Photo Challenges, I had discovered several places in Sheffield where I could devise an ‘urban geology’ field trip for the group and the riven paving stones on Thompson Road – probably locally quarried Brincliffe Edge Rock - was a good start.

 

Paving on Thompson Road

 

The Grade II Listed gatepiers at the entrance to Sheffield Botanical Gardens are built with a medium grained sandstone with a uniform colour and texture, which looks like the same stone used for the glasshouses. On my previous visit in November 2021, I had a good look at both of these and concluded that it is probably Stoke Hall stone from the Kinderscout Grit at Grindleford.

 

The gatepiers on Thompson Road

 

The south lodge is built with another sandstone that is again quite different to those previously seen, but I can’t readily identify it. The nearest source of stone for general walling is the Brincliffe Edge Rock, which was produced by several quarries in the near vicinity, but the medium grain size and colour is not typical of this formation and it could be Crawshaw Sandstone.

 

The walling stone at the south lodge

My next stop was the Evolution Garden, where the Lepidodendron stump and the large blocks of coal provide the geological highlights of the gardens, with no similar specimens now being seen in any other part of Sheffield - although a replica of the now buried stumps at Middlewood Hospital can be found at Wadsley Park Village.

 

The Lepidodendron and blocks of coal

 

Post of the gardens are underlain by mudstones and the recent heavy rain had made it waterlogged and quite slippery in places. Taking care while crossing areas of muddy ground, I got back on to the footpath and made my way past several large blocks of massive, cross-bedded gritstone that was presumably obtained from the Chatsworth Grit in the Rivelin Valley.

 

The Rock and Water Garden

Large blocks of gritstone and flagstones are also used extensively in the Rock and Water Garden, which was redesigned in 1926 by Clarence Elliott, the gardener and naturalist who was also responsible for Whinfell Quarry Garden.

 

The blue plaque for Robert Marnock

Continuing to the north gateway, which is built with coarse grained Chatsworth Grit, which contains quartz pebbles the size of a little fingernail, I was interested to see the blue plaque for Robert Marnock, who was a consultant for Sheffield General Cemetery and designed the gardens in Weston Park and Kenwood Hall.

 

Various stones and rocks in the pavilions

 

One of my previous visits to the Sheffield Botanical Gardens, which coincided with an Art in the Gardens event, I was interested to see that scattered amongst the various tropical plants and cacti, which were laid out in large Stoke Hall stone planters in the pavilions - following the restoration in 2003 – there are numerous large rock and mineral specimens, which include rough siltstone slabs, well rounded sandstone boulders and lumps of gypsum. 

 

Rough siltstone slabs in the pavilions