From City Road to Norfolk Road

 

A detail at the Victoria Methodist Church

Continuing down Granville Road, having had a quick look at the historic architecture and building stones along City Road, I first stopped at the entrance to Norfolk Heritage Park, where the walling for the lodge is built with what I think is Silkstone Rock, which was once extracted from a nearby quarry owned by the Duke of Norfolk. 

 

The lodge at the Granville Road entrance to Norfolk Heritage Park

 

The sandstone for the dressings and the crests carved on the lodge and the screen wall is a uniformly buff coloured medium grained sandstone. It looks very much like Stoke Hall stone from the Kinderscout Grit at Grindleford, in Derbyshire, which was used to build the old Sheffield Town Hall and for the dressings in many of the better quality Victorian buildings in Sheffield. 

 

A crest on the screen wall at Norfolk Heritage Park

Crossing over to the bottom of Stafford Road, I set off to investigate the tall church spire that I could see in the distance and came across further examples of crozzle on the old boundary wall on Ingram Road. Here, it alternates with blocks of squared sandstone to top an irregularly coursed and squared stone wall, where the greyish, fine grained sandstone has sporadic iron staining. 

 

Crozzle used for the topping of a stone wall on Ingram Road.

On the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, only half a dozen large houses had been built on the south side of Norfolk Road and Stafford Road was not yet in existence, with Gin Stables Lane being marked on the map; however, by the time of the 1906 edition, the area had been developed considerably and the use of crozzle seems to be a characteristic of this period - with further examples seen on the boundary wall to the Victorian Methodist Church and Sunday School, which was built in 1899. 

 

Crozzle on a boundary wall along Stafford Lane

Although partly obscured by C20 houses, which have been built in its former grounds on the frontage to Ingram Road, Gin Stables – now used as garages - still exist. From Stafford Lane, its upper section is seen to comprise well squared and coursed masonry that has a large proportion of orange/brown coloured blocks, with stone tiles used for the roof. 

 

Orange/brown sandstone used at Gin Stables

With so few accessible rock exposures or old quarry faces to examine, which voluntary groups such as the South Yorkshire RIGS Group and Sheffield Area Geology Trust have tried to identify and conserve, unless there is supporting documentary evidence, the determination of the provenance of any given stone usually requires an educated guess. 

 

Victoria Methodist Church

Approaching Victoria Methodist Church, although I have not yet discovered its architect, my first thought was that this might be another example of Crawshaw Sandstone – as specified by various architects who worked for the Sheffield School Board, whose work I had encountered in Crookes and Walkley - including that of WJ Hale. 

 

The main door to Victoria Methodist Church

With all of the quarries in Sheffield that supplied general building stone having long since closed, it is fortunate that the walling stone seen here and in many of Sheffield’s high quality buildings has proved to be very durable - as obtaining a good match for restoration work is not always very easy, which I discovered when working in the building restoration industry in London. 

 

The Triton Stone Library

The massive, uniformly buff coloured sandstone, which has been used for the dressings to the windows and doorways at Victoria Methodist Church looks like another example of Stoke Hall stone but, where it has been used for floriated capitals - in conjunction with pink Peterhead granite shafts – its pitted surface looks like the result of abrasive cleaning. 

 

A detail of a floriated capital at Victoria Methodist Church

Before returning to Norfolk Road, I had a quick look at the gate piers and boundary wall of the church, where there is a contrast in the condition of the best quality sandstone used for the caps, band courses and plinths and the local Parkgate Rock used for the basic walling.

  

A gate pier at Victoria Methodist Church

 

Noting the stonework in the boundary walls and the C19 houses, where I could see them, I then continued to the Shrewsbury Almshouses, where Silkstone Rock from the nearby Clay Wood Quarry was originally used, but refacing in the 1990’s was undertaken with Stoke Hall stone; however, with no public access available, I could only view these from a considerable distance.

 

The Shrewsbury Almshouses