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| A sample of Silkstone Rock from Clay Wood Quarry |
My afternoon in Sheffield, to further investigate its geology, historic architecture and building stones, had so far thrown up various examples of the Silkstone Rock and Parkgate Rock on City Road and Stafford Street and I next went to investigate the remains of the old Clay Wood Quarry – now obscured behind a copse that borders the Cholera Monument Grounds.
Firstly though, I had a quick look around the grounds, which is dominated by the Cholera Monument, built in 1835 to a triangular plan design by Michael Ellison Hadfield – a prominent Victorian Gothic Revival architect who was best known for his work on Roman Catholic churches, which include St. Marie’s Cathedral in Sheffield.
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| The Cholera Monument |
I didn’t take a close look at the massive grained sandstone used in its construction, but it lacks the uniform colour and texture seen in those from Stoke Hall, Bolton Woods and Crosland Hill, which are brought in from some considerable distance away in Derbyshire and West Yorkshire.
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| The monument to John Blake |
The grounds also include a large inscribed monument slab to John Blake, the Master Cutler who perished in the cholera epidemic in Sheffield in 1832, with 401 other victims, and a clay cobble art installation that was erected in 2004 and represents the individuals who lost their lives.
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| A detail of the clay pebble mound art installation |
Eventually arriving at the heavily overgrown remaining face of Clay Wood Quarry, which is partly fenced off, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to get a look at the Silkstone Rock – whose only other location that I knew is in the cuttings at the northern approach to Sheffield Midland railway station.
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| The access point to the Clay Wood Quarry |
Slowly picking my way through hawthorne and brambles, whose spikes I took great care and time to avoid, I did manage to get close up to the barely visible rock exposures to take a few photos that show its irregular flaggy nature here.
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| An exposure of irregularly bedded flaggy Silkstone Rock |
The single sample that I obtained with my Estwing hammer is fine grained, light brown in colour and has noticeable iron staining in places, which often appear in outcrops as Liesegang rings – a characteristic of very many sandstones in South Yorkshire.
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| Colour variation in the Silkstone Rock from Clay Wood Quarry |
When looking around the area, I noticed that several large boulders of Pennine Coal Measures Group sandstone had been used for landscaping, but the boulder at the edge of the copse is partially embedded in the ground, which suggests that it could be from the Clay Wood Quarry.
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| A boulder of sandstone at the edge of Clay Wood Quarry |
Taking a quick look at the large boulders by the path, which I think have been brought in from further afield for landscaping, during the creation of the nearby South Street Park, I was interested to see that one contained numerous ironstone nodules.
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| Ironstone nodules in a large sandstone boulder |
The Silkstone Rock underlies a considerable part of central Sheffield, where it forms a plateau that overlooks the River Don and the River Sheaf, but around the Cholera Monument Grounds it forms a pronounced escarpment from which there is a panoramic view.
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| A panoramic view from the Cholera Monument Grounds |
Leaving the grounds on the way to have a look at the artwork that has been installed around Park Hill Flats, before catching my bus home, I had a very quick look at the stonework in a small group of Victorian terraced houses on Claywood Road.
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| Victorian terraced houses on Claywood Road |
From the various stone buildings that I seen during the afternoon, as well as the extremely limited rock outcrop at Clay Wood Quarry, I would say that the stone was probably not obtained from the latter - with my educated guess being that it came from the old quarry in the Parkgate Rock, which has now been filled to form Skye Edge Fields.
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| A detail of masonry on Claywood Road |
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