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| An iron nodule in the Woodhouse Rock |
The area around Hackenthorpe and Beighton is a part of Sheffield that I don’t know very well but, not that long after the A57 Mosborough Parkway opened here in 1988, I vividly recall the spectacular exposures of the Woodhouse Rock that could be seen in the road cuttings here.
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| An Ordnance Survey map showing Drakehouse Rocks |
During my recent exploration of the Shire Brook Valley, having gleaned from fellow walkers that some rock exposures could still be seen, I decided to extend my walk by a couple of kilometres and went in search of them
Taking the underpass at the east end of the nature reserve, I followed the directions I was given to Moss Way and, having waited for what seemed like an age to cross this extremely busy road to the Crystal Peaks shopping centre, I followed the path and very soon arrived at an area called Drakehouse Rocks.
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| The Woodhouse Rock at Drakehouse Rocks |
There is no sign of any quarries on old maps that I have access to and I am assuming that this is a cutting that was purposely made to provide a pedestrian link between Moss Way and Eckington Way, which were built at some time after 1950.
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| An ironstone nodule in the Woodhouse Rock |
I stopped only long enough to take a few photographs of the Woodhouse Rock, but it is an excellent safe and easily accessible exposure for study and it has in fact already been used as a field trip location by the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT), with members of the Open University Geological Society.
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| A general view of the Woodhouse Rock |
The massive, wedge-bedded and medium grained nature of the rock contrasts strongly with the laminated sandstone that I had seen earlier on my walk at Normanton Hill and this indicates deposition in a river channel rather than a crevasse splay deposit, which is formed when a river bursts its banks.
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| Thin basal beds of ironstone |
As with very other sandstones from the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation, it has a high concentration of iron and this is apparent as lenses, nodules, thin basal beds of ironstone and as dense brown accumulations on joint planes.
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| A lens of ironstone in the Woodhouse Rock |
Crossing Eckington Way, which is also very busy with traffic, I made my way up the public footpath and, instead of following this towards Beighton, I made my way to another path that runs round the edge of the field.
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| A view west along the A57 |
Looking back to the west along the line of the A57, the dip slope of the escarpment that I followed down Normanton Hill can be made out in Richmond Park to the right, with an angle of 9 degrees to the east-north-east. To the left, the high ground beyond which is Ridgeway Road – the ring road to the south-west of Sheffield – is formed by Parkgate Rock, which dips 5 degrees to the north-east.
Carrying on in search of a place where I might get a view of the road cutting between the Eckington Way and Beighton roundabouts, I stopped to photograph the views of the Parkgate Rock on the skyline to the south-west and a panorama of the Mexborough Rock to the north-east, before finally arriving at a footbridge over the A57.
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| A panorama of the Mexborough Rock on the skyline |
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