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| The Sheffield District Railway cutting at Catcliffe |
Now entering the eight week of the COVID-19 pandemic, with travel restrictions still in place and queues at the nearest supermarket often resulting in making me miss my hourly bus home, my next local walk to further investigate the geology and historic buildings around Treeton started at Catcliffe Glass Cone.
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| Catcliffe Glass Cone |
Apart from the various mediaeval churches in Rotherham, which I have detailed in my previous posts, this is one of the very few Grade I Listed buildings in Rotherham. Although essentially built with bricks, it deserves mention – as does the unlisted St Mary's church, built in 1910, which is just a stone’s throw away.
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| St. Mary's church |
Although the church is not a listed building, the sandstone used to build the church was supplied from Orgreave colliery and the style of the tooled masonry for the walling is very unusual – described to me variously as polygonal cut random, mosaic style or random pick-face - and I have only seen something similar at St. Mark’s church in Grenoside and Whiston Methodist Church, both of which are in South Yorkshire.
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| A detail of walling stone at St. Mary's church |
In addition to the odd style of masonry, the choice of Triassic red St. Bees sandstone for the dressings is also quite unusual in this region, where the local Carboniferous Millstone Grit and Coal Measures sandstones have been used for the vast majority of traditional buildings – with only Portland limestone from Dorset normally used for some of the more prestigious public buildings, as is the case in many cities and towns in northern England.
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| The west door of St. Mary's church |
Over the years, weathering has formed a patina on the Coal Measures sandstone walling and the stone dressings have become blackened in places; however, the red sandstone surrounds to the west door are still very clean and unweathered, which suggests that it has been inserted recently.
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| A detail of masonry to the west door |
Perhaps it is because the church is not listed, or no effort was made to properly match the existing red sandstone, but I was very surprised to see that the new red sandstone used is Permian Locharbriggs sandstone - with its distinctive dark clay bands – and not St. Bees sandstone, which is still readily available.
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| A detail of Locharbriggs sandstone |
Having developed specialist stone identification and matching skills, while working in the building restoration industry, I notice such details and, given that the architect for St. Mary’s church is also responsible for St. Helen’s church in Treeton, I would hope that much greater care is taken when specifying a suitable replacement the Rotherham Red sandstone here, which is becoming increasingly scarce.
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| A reference book in my library |
Such attention to detail separates the restoration specialist from the general builder but, in my experience of historic buildings, this distinction is not always made in practice; however, on this occasion, the main purpose of my walk was to try and find a path to the Sheffield District Railway cutting, where an extensive section of the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation is exposed.
Set on the southern end of the now closed Tinsley Marshalling Yard, which was built in 1965, I had seen this exposure many times when driving by or sat on the top deck of a bus but, as with many railway cuttings, public access is not possible and so I tried to find a suitable vantage point.
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| A view south from Wood Lane |
After making my way through and around various housing estates in Catcliffe, which are set on Treeton Rock, I arrived at Wood Lane, which is the only road apart from the inaccessible Sheffield Parkway that crosses this railway cutting. From here, high walls on the road bridge prevented from me from getting a good look and I could only take a few general photographs.
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| A view north from Wood Lane |
Since the marshalling yard here was closed, the rock exposures have become substantially overgrown but competent sandstone can still be seen in the upper half of the section, with the mudstones of the lower half of the section being heavily weathered and covered with scree.
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| A detail of sandstone above mudstone |
Making my way along Europa Link to the Mercure Sheffield Parkway hotel, the undeveloped waste land to the north of the Sheffield Parkway was full of lumps of grey siltstone, but I could still not find access to the cutting and again could only take a few photos from behind a fence.
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| A walk around Catcliffe |
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