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| The Shire Brook in Wickfield Plantation |
Having encountered various historic buildings in Intake, while walking down Mansfield Road, I continued up Hollinsend Road to Jaunty Park, where I started out on the main purpose of my walk – to try and find some geology along the section of the Shire Brook that runs from Hollinsend down to Normanton Spring.
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| A panoramic view of Jaunty Park |
Walking across some often wild grassland into the valley formed in the Pennines Lower Coal Measures Formation, I turned round to look at the escarpment of Parkgate Rock, which here is cut by a fault with a downthrow to the north side.
Arriving at the Shire Brook, the banks were largely overgrown with thick undergrowth and I couldn’t see anywhere likely to have rock exposures. As with the upper parts of Shirtcliffe Valley, where I found a coal seam, the streambed was littered with blocks of stone, bricks and other materials from the Birley Vale Colliery, which was once located on the east side of the brook.
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| The streambed of the Shire Brook |
I quickly walked down the path to Mansfield Road/Birley Moor Road where, just before it passes under the road, there is a large area of red ochre stained boggy ground, which had by now become a familiar sight during my investigations of various woods around Sheffield.
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| Ochreous staining in the Shire Brook |
On the other side of the road, the path runs alongside a secure fence and, as I again later discovered, the brook is culverted here and the fenced off area is part of the former Birley West Colliery and the subsequent Normanton Spring landfill site - both of which are now restored.
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| Industry around the Shire Brook in 1906 |
Crossing Linley Lane and entering Wickfield Plantation, I finally found some rock outcrops in the streambed and banks of the Shire Brook, which once formed the boundary of the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria and later between Derbyshire and Yorkshire.
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| A view down to the streambed of the Shire Brook |
The thinly bedded sandstone here is the same one that I encountered at the roadside cutting at the bottom of Normanton Hill, with the bedding planes and an irregular pattern of oblique jointing being exposed along the streambed.
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| The streambed of the Shire Brook |
Old maps show a disused quarry to the south side of the brook, but I kept to the footpath and didn’t see any evidence of this. The stone would have been used mainly for basic walling and, although flaggy, paving stones or stone roof tiles could probably not be produced commercially from this sandstone quarry.
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| Iron stained sandstone with irregular jointing |
In places, the sandstone is fine grained with a rusty brown iron staining and is similar to that seen in the outcrop on Richmond Road and, although not developed here, the strata between this and the Vanderbeckei (Clay Cross) Marine Band in the Barnsley District contain once economically important ironstones.
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| Various building materials in the streambed |
Following the course of the brook further downstream, large tracts of the streambed are dominated by old building stones and bricks – reflecting the industrial history of the area – but dark grey siltstone and weathered mudstone can occasionally seen in the banks.
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| Mudstone in the stream bank |
Leaving the woods, I then quickly made my way back up through Richmond Park, where the position of the Vanderbeckei Marine Band - the boundary between the Lower and Middle Coal Measures - approximately coincides with a small diverted stream that cuts into the relatively soft underlying rocks here.
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| A panoramic view towards Normanton Spring |
Walking up the path, to the left is the long dip slope that forms the part of Richmond Park to the north side of Normanton Hill and, to the right, an escarpment rises up to the blocks of flats on Stradbrook Road.
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| A view across the Vanderbeckei Marine Band |
Finally arriving back on Richmond Road, I had half an hour before the No.73 bus arrived to take me back to Treeton. Having been shut during COVID-19 Pandemic lockdown, the Richmond Road public house was now open but, not wishing to spend time amongst the crowd that was gathered outside, I bought a cold beer from the Co-op and quenched my thirst at Woodthorpe Fishond.
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| A cold beer at Woodthorpe Fishpond |
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