Save Our Greenbelt in Braithwell

 

An invitation to a Coffee Morning by Save Our Greenbelt

At some time in autumn 2024, I received some information about the proposed Whitestone solar farms in South Yorkshire in the post, but it was so vague that I didn’t take much notice of it, until a couple of days after my exploration of Darnall Cemetery, when a good friend from Micklebring asked me to help Save Our Greenbelt to fight the proposed Whitestone 1 Solar Farm planned for Conisbrough Parks - in my capacity as a geologist.

 

The Whitestone 1 Solar Farm Masterplan as at July 2026

I don't have the knowledge or experience of the drainage and flooding problems that have been anticipated, due to the run off from the array of solar panels, and I therefore advised that the input of a hydrologist would be required, but also that my experience of producing the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment for Doncaster MBC with the British Geological Survey might be of use. 

 

The Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment

As part of the Local Development Framework, which Doncaster MBC were beginning to prepare, the implementation of Planning Policy Statement 9: Biodiversity and Geological Conservation (PPS9) place equal weight on biodiversity and geodiversity. 

 

An extract from the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment

Threats posed by inappropriate site development (or the infilling of quarries), which would not be tolerated in wildlife or archaeological sites of comparable scientific or educational value, now need to be taken into account and this not only includes individual sites but also the geomorphology and landforms too – of which the Magnesian Limestone escarpment that runs from the north to the south of Doncaster is a very important example. 

 

An extract from the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment

Although the geomorphology and landforms were not specifically highlighted in the Doncaster Geodiversity Assessment, the Magnesian Limestone escarpment and the Don Gorge are topographic features that have greatly influenced the history of the borough, including that of Conisbrough Parks. 

 

A Coffee Morning at the Ruddle Centre in Braithwell

I therefore decided to attend the Save Our Greenbelt coffee morning at the Ruddle Centre in Braithwell, before getting a lift to Micklebring from my friends and then walking to Clifton, which would give me a great insight into how the proposed solar farm would affect this area. 

 

The OS map of the area around Braithwell, Micklebring and Clifton

 

To give me a bit of background to the Whitestone proposals, I looked at their website only to see a map that was so small that I had to use my hand lens on the computer screen to try and find the places that would be affected, which didn’t leave a very good impression on me. 

 

An updated map of the proposed Whitestone Solar Farms

 

Furthermore, when trying to find Clifton and its Conservation Area on the Doncaster Heritage Map, I was astounded to discover that the proposed solar farm is underlain by a zone that is described as “Major archaeological objection to the development of the site”. 

 

The Doncaster Heritage Map showing Conisbrough Parks

A Walk From Darnall to Attercliffe

 

The aqueduct on the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal

Just before leaving Darnall Cemetery, where I had photographed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones and found some unusual headstones made with various stones, I had a quick look at the sandstone used to build the north-western boundary wall. 

 

A dry stone wall made with flaggy sandstone in Darnall Cemetery

 

In one place very thinly bedded flaggy sandstone has been laid as a dry stone wall, which is a characteristic of the Brincliffe Edge (Greenmoor) Rock and to a lesser extent the Penistone Flags, both of which are Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation sandstones. It is extremely unlikely that this would be brought in for a dry stone wall, but I don’t ever recall seeing other walling like this in this part of South Yorkshire and its source is a bit of a mystery. 

 

The geological map of the area around Darnall and Attercliffe

In the area around Darnall and Attercliffe, unnamed sandstones from the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation (PMCMF) provide the underlying geology and another section of the wall is built with more massive plane bedded sandstone, which is essentially grey with some iron staining. It is similar to the sandstone seen in the boundary wall of St. Lawrence’s churchyard and along Bawtry Road in Tinsley, which is again underlain by an unnamed PMCMF sandstone. 

 

A section of wall made with massive sandstone in Darnall Cemetery

I then set off along Darnall Road past the Ball Inn and the former Darnall Road Board School to undertake my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, which consisted of 6 brick built industrial buildings that formed part of the various steelworks that once operated in Darnall, but have very little interest to this Language of Stone Blog.

 

The listed buildings on my Photo Challenge

The former Sanderson's Darnall Steelworks and Don Valley Glassworks on Darnall Road, which is a Scheduled Monument, contains four Grade II listed buildings comprising two sets of crucible steel shops (1871 and 1872), the former offices (c.1872) and the lodge, weighbridge cabin and boundary wall (c.1872).

 

Listed buildings at the Sanderson's Darnall Steelworks

 

Continuing down Darnall Road, the Grade II listed workshop (1913) at the Darnall Works was the next building on my list. It is an example example of a steel framed structure with glass and brick infill panels and concrete dressings, with a corrugated iron roof, but to my eye doesn't possess great architectural merit. 

 

The workshop at the Darnall Works

Although not on my list, I took a couple of general record photos of the aqueduct and adjoining raised footways that form part of the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal, before retracing my steps and heading along Allende Way to Coleridge Road, to find the last building on my Photo Challenge. 

 

The aqueduct on the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal

The crucible steel melting shop (c.1890), now a store, was built for Huntsman and Co. which had associations with Benjamin Huntsman, the inventor of the crucible steel making process, whose tomb can be found in the graveyard of Attercliffe Chapel. 

 

The crucible steel melting shop

Walking down to Pothouse Bridge, I was quite surprised to see that the boundary walls on both sides of the road are built with sandstone similar to the massive stone seen in the walls of Darnall Cemetery. Except for window cills and heads, red brick is used for all of the industrial buildings and associated housing that I had seen and several brickworks in the area are marked on the old Ordnance Survey maps. 

A boundary wall on Coleridge Road

Although the brick pits would be mainly extracting the mudstone, the associated unnamed sandstones would presumably have been good enough to use for boundary walls in the immediate vicinity such as this, because the transport of stone adds significantly to its cost. 

 

Crozzle topping a boundary wall

 

As is very commonly seen in Sheffield in the boundary walls of later Victorian houses, one of the walls is topped with a type of slag known locally as crozzle, which was formed during the cementation process of making steel. 

 

The aqueduct on the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal

 

Having completed my Photo Challenge, I completed my walk by walking along the canal towpath back to Attercliffe, with my first stop being the aqueduct that I had seen 20 minutes earlier. As with many other civil engineering projects in Sheffield, such as the Wicker Arches, it uses the coarse grained and often pebbly Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley. 

 

Supports on the Shirland Lane Bridge

Continuing along the towpath to the Shirland Lane Bridge, I stopped briefly to have another look at the PMCMF sandstone that forms its foundations, where the same colouration as in the boundary wall on Coleridge Road can be seen. 

 

PMCMF sandstone beneath Shirland Lane Bridge

 

I had found this in April 2021, when investigating the Dunsil Coal and associated Coal Measures strata a little further along the canal and just took a few photos before leaving the towpath at Pinfold Bridge and walking to Attercliffe Road, where I caught a bus to Sheffield.

 

PMCMF sandstone beneath Shirland Lane Bridge

 

An Exploration of Darnall Cemetery

 

The headstone of William Cheetham and family

My search for the 13 Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstones in Darnall Cemetery had taken just over 20 minutes but, as a geologist with specialist interests in building stone, I wanted to find other interesting headstones and monuments. 

 

The memorial to Samson Chambers

The memorial to Samson Chambers (d.1898) and his wife Eliza Smithurst (d.1913) is built with a pink Peterhead granite base, with the tapering pedestal, capital and urn using a dark grey granite that I presume to be a granite from Aberdeen or the nearby area, with the Rubislaw and Kemnay varieties immediately coming to mind. 

 

A detail of the memorial to Samson Chambers

Although these granites are are part of the Aberdeen and Kemnay plutons respectively, these are both derived from the East Grampian Batholith which formed c.475 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. Both are foliated and contain both biotite and muscovite. The geological memoirs for the areas where they occur, 76E/77W and 77, describe them as having a very similar texture, mineralogy and geochemistry. 

 

Views of the memorial to William Bolsover

The monument to William Bolsover (d.1890) is made with a similar granite, with pink Peterhead granite used for colonnettes. As seen in many Victorian banks, very often in conjunction with Peterhead granite. Rubislaw granite tends to have a much higher biotite content and is darker than Kemnay granite, which has a slightly pink tinge to its alkali felspar, and I think it has been used for both of these memorials. 

 

The headstone of Geoffrey Osbourne and his parents John and Marian

 

A lighter grey granite is used for the headstone of Geoffrey Osbourne (d.1958), which also commemorates his father John (d.1978) and mother Marian (d.1984). The rectangular phenocrysts of alkali feldspar are a characteristic of the granites that were once extensively quarried in Devon and Cornwall, which are largely underlain by the Cornubian Batholith. 

 

The headstone of Thomas Foster and his family

 

Gabbro, an igneous rock composed mainly of the minerals clinopyroxene and plagioclase feldspar, is used for the memorial to Thomas Foster (d.1907), his wife and very young children. Apart from the material used, which I haven’t seen very often in headstones of this age, I was very interested in the design of this headstone, with its broken segmental pediment and an urn/finial. 

 

The headstone of Frances and George Chapman

 

I am by no means an expert in cemetery monuments, but I thought that this was quite unusual and the headstone of Frances Chapman (d.1902) and her husband George (d.1907) is also surprisingly ornate and contrasts with the vast majority of the sandstone headstones in the cemetery. 

 

Sandstone headstones in Darnall Cemetery

 

When looking at the headstones in Wardsend Cemetery, Hugh Waterhouse informed me that he thought that the blank headstones, which are very probably from quarries in the Brincliffe Edge Rock around Brincliffe Edge, were supplied to memorial masons in the city, who inscribed and carved in relief as necessary, but Darnall Cemetery has several other headstones that to not have this standard design. 

 

The Parkes, Goddard and Hill headstones

Those of William Ernest Parkes, Beatrice Goddard and William Henry Hill, who all died in 1907, also have an unusual design and the decoration includes colonnettes with capitals, a pediment like feature and decoration with carved ivy leaves and other floriated details. 

 

Headstones with a clasped hands motif

 

The clasped hands motif, seen on the headstone of Harry Goddard, is a feature of the headstones of Elizabeth Stanford (d.1906) and her husband Fred (d.1925) and another where the front face of the stone has delaminated to remove the inscription. Forming a mirror image of each other, the design incorporates a depiction of tree trunks, which have had their branches sawn off, and have a dove holding a leaf in its beak on the top. 

 

The Ramsey and Speddings headstones

 

Carrara marble from Italy has been used for several headstones, including Annie Ramsey (d.1905) and Walter Ramsey (d.1923) and Jane (d.1927), Harold (d.1949) and Doris (d.1989) Speddings. These headstones have been made in the same style, with the Ramsey memorial being weathered to a much greater extent, with much of the detail of the ivy leaves having been lost.

 

A marble headstone that has lost its lead lettering

As with the CWGC headstones in the cemetery, where the Portland limestone has also lost much of its detail, the deep saccharoidal weathering and significant loss of the surface is probably the result of sulphurous pollution from the steelworks in the Lower Don Valley and another marble headstone has lost nearly all of its lead lettering. 

 

The headstone to members of the Nicholson family

Another example of the use of gabbro is seen in the headstone (1919) that commemorates several members of the Nicholson family. Finer grained gabbros are now imported from India and China, but before this South Africa was supplying coarser grained gabbro from the Bushveld Complex, although I don’t know when this was first used in Britain. 

 

The headstone of members of the North family

 

The last headstone that I noted is that of Samuel (d.1891) and Julia (d.1919) North, which I first thought was another use of gabbro but, looking more closely at this, I could see that it is predominantly composed of intergrown crystals of feldspar and that it is a variety of larvikite, which has a colour that I am not familiar with but could be Marina Pearl.

 

A detail of the North family headstone

War Graves in Darnall Cemetery

 

The regimental crest on the headstone of Private T. Sproson

A couple of days after my walk from Tinsley to Brightside, in the industrial east end of Sheffield, I took advantage of another fine April day to undertake a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge in Darnall, which I had first visited 4 years earlier when exploring the Sheffield Board Schools and then when photographing the chapels and war memorial in Tinsley Park Cemetery. 

 

The Listed buildings in Darnall Ward

Of the 53 listed buildings in Darnall Ward, 47 of these had already been photographed – all but 3 by myself – and the last 6 were all structures relating to the steel industry that have very little interest to this Language of Stone Blog. I therefore compiled a list of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstones at Darnall Cemetery to start off my day. 

 

The CWGC headstones in Darnall Cemetery

 

Although one of the smaller cemeteries in Sheffield, with an area of approximately 2.2 hectares, it is not always easy to find the headstones - as I had discovered at St. Lawrence’s churchyard in Tinsley earlier in the week - and I managed to find a plot map that would help me to locate the 13 CWGC headstones that are recorded in this cemetery. 

 

The plot map of Darnall Cemetery

The only regiment on my list that I had not yet encountered was the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, to which Private A. Smith was attached, but its crest is a simple maple leaf - as I had previously seen at St. Mary’s churchyard in Bolsterstone, on the headstone of Private P. Woodhead of the Canadian Infantry. 

 

The headstone of Private A. Smith

 

Looking closely at the Portland stone, the surface has weathered significantly and many of the details of the crest have lost their sharp profiles and parts of the inscription are now becoming illegible, which is probably attributable to the sulphurous atmospheric pollution that was generated by the numerous steelworks in the east end of Sheffield. 

 

A detail of the headstone of Private A. Smith

The Headstone Schedule for Private. A. Smith also includes those of Aircraftman F. Hemmings of the Royal Air Force, Private G. Roe of the Leicestershire Regiment, Corporal W. Ellis and Private T. Sproson of the Royal Army Service Corps. The headstones are all made of Portland stone, with that of the latter being a replacement, and the details of the crests and inscriptions of the others having deteriorated considerably. 

 

Various headstones made with Portland stone

 

Portland stone is also used for the headstone of Private J. Grayson of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, which has again weathered with a loss of detail and, quite surprisingly, has a covering of lichen. The CWGC take great care to clean their headstones, with this undertaken both by employees and volunteers, and I can’t recall seeing a headstone in such a condition. 

 

Lichen on the headstone of Private J. Grayson

 

I next encountered the headstones of Private J. Macrae of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and Private G. Stones of the York and Lancaster Regiment, which are clearly different to those described above. They immediately reminded me of the headstones of Private T. Sharp and Private E. Stickland in Handsworth New Cemetery, which I thought are made of Welsh slate. 

 

the headstone of Private J. Macrae

On both of the slate headstones in Darnall Cemetery, the stone had been broken to reveal very fine grained slate, but the headstone of Private G. Stones looks on my photos to be greenish in colour, with part of the broken surface having the same colouration - a characteristic usually associated with volcanic green slate.

 

The headstone of Private G. Stones

It certainly doesn’t look like the slate from the Borrowdale Volcanic Group, which I spent 6 weeks mapping as an undergraduate geologist and I tend to immediately recognise. I would have to take another look at this, but Welsh slate does often contain bands of volcanic ash – as I had seen on Neville Street in Leeds the year before. 

 

The headstone of Private L. Brown

 

The next headstone that I encountered, Private L. Brown of the York and Lancaster Regiment, is made of a granite that is not recorded on the Headstone Schedule, which also includes Gunner J.R. Willoughby of the Royal Garrison Artillery, Private T. Whiteley and Private F. Benson of the East Yorkshire Regiment and Private A. Glover of the York and Lancaster Regiment. 

 

Various headstones made of granite

Creetown, Inver and Rubislaw granites are recorded on the Headstone Schedules on a few of the headstones that I have encountered in various cemeteries in Sheffield and, corresponding with the CWGC, I have been informed that Glenaby and Vire Blanc granite from France have been used when the limited availability and cost of the Scottish granites became prohibitive; however, looking online, I have not found definitive examples of these French granites to enable me to identify them.

 

A detail of the headstone of Gunner J.R. Willoughby

 

Taking a closer look at the headstone of Gunner J.R. Willoughby, it looks like the Creetown granite that is recorded as having been used for Driver C.H. Eagers of the Royal Engineers at Crookes Cemetery and which I think has also been used in Handsworth New Cemetery. 

 

A detail of the headstone of Driver C.H. Eagers in Crookes Cemetery

As a geologist with specialist interests in building stones, I have seen many granites and have included some of those from the British Isles in the Triton Stone Library, which has since been transferred to Sheffield Hallam University.  I am not an expert in the identification of granites and I submitted a close up photo of the headstone of Private L. Brown to the British Geological Survey Asset Bank, but the results were not very helpful.

 

A detail of the granite used for the headstone of Private L. Brown