The Broomhill Board School

 

The Broomhill Board School

 

Finally arriving in Broomhill, having walked up the long hill from Crookesmoor Board School, I immediately went in search of Broomhill Board School, the final Sheffield Board School that I had planned to see during a good walk in Sheffield.

The approach along Beech Hill Road

Approaching the school from the west, the semi-circular end and the flat roof looked like an Art Deco cinema and unlike any of the other 18 schools that I had seen on my travels to date, not including the Central Schools at Leopold Street. These odd looking features are actually a staircase tower, which was added in 1880, with the rooftop playground being created in 1943 after a fire destroyed the original second floor and pitched roof.

 

The north elevation

The school dates to 1873 and was the second board school built after the Education Act of 1870 and, following the demolition of the Newhall Board School in 1970, it is now the oldest remaining board school in Sheffield.

 

A view from the east

Continuing along Beech Hill Road, the north elevation is seen to possess recessed arched windows, with herringbone masonry and trefoils, which would become a prominent feature of CJ Innocent’s work and the original drawing shows that it was originally no less ornate than any of the other schools that he designed when with the practice Innocent and Brown.

 

The Sheffield School Board crest

 

From the start, space was an issue with the school and it was extended in 1870 and 1880, as well as 1887, but I didn’t spend much time looking at the various buildings, including the caretaker’s house. Instead, I just photographed a few of the details that I could see, including the Sheffield School Board crest and the inscriptions that marked the entrances for the girls and infants.

 

An inscribed gate pier

 

Although I didn’t examine the masonry in any detail, I didn’t see anything to make me think that the usual Crawshaw Sandstone had not been used for the walling stone; however, the inscribed gate piers didn’t seem to be the gritty sandstone that features in most of the schools and the stone for the crest didn’t look uniform in colour or texture - as I would expect from the massive Derbyshire or West Yorkshire sandstones, which were generally used for dressings.

 

The entrance for infants

Having considerable experience of stone identification and matching, I thought that identical stone had been used for the original building and extensions and I was very surprised to discover that, according to the book Building Schools for Sheffield by the Victorian Society, Dunford Hill stone has been used for walling stone.

 

The location of potential sources of building stone

A short article on the Sheffield Area Geology Trust website suggests that Dunford Hill refers to Dunford Bridge in the north-west of Barnsley where the Huddersfield White Rock was quarried but, although this is apparently used for ashlar at St. James’s church in Woodhouse, dated 1878, I have not yet examined it closely.

 

The caretaker's house

 

It is also states that Handsworth stone is used for dressings, which again I found surprising because, although the quarries – which marketed their product as ‘bluestone’ - have disappeared and no rock outcrops can be seen in the area, nearly all of the historic buildings that I have seen in Handsworth have developed a very distinct ‘ginger nut’ hue when weathered – a characteristic that is not apparent at Broomhill Board School.

 

A view from the south