An Exploration of Hillsborough - Part 2

 

The River Loxley at Hillsborough Corner

Leaving Hillsborough Park, having noted the rock exposures around Scraith Wood and photographed Hillsborough Hall Public Library, I quickly walked down Middlewood Road to Hillsborough Corner, where the flow of the River Loxley is interrupted by various bridges and a weir, before it continues to the River Don.

 

The weir on the the River Loxley at Hillsborough Corner

The bridge and the weir are constructed with massive blocks of very coarse gritty sandstone, which I have always assumed to be Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley. During the Great Sheffield Flood in 1864, the weir and bridge were hardly touched; however, I noticed that the southern section of the weir had been damaged, with the removal of large blocks of gritstone – the result of the heavy rain in November 2019, which caused widespread flooding.

 

Another view of the weir on the River Loxley at Hillsborough Corner

Continuing up Langsett Road, I passed the former Walkley and Hillsborough District Baths, designed by the Sheffield City architect F.E.P. Edwards and built in 1926. I have always liked the Baroque details on this building, together with the plain ashlar masonry that looks like it could have come from either Derbyshire or West Yorkshire, but it isn’t listed.

 

The former Hillsborough and Walkley District Baths

Further up Langsett Road, a large castellated turret adjacent to Hillsborough Interchange marks the beginning of Hillsborough Barracks, a vast complex of buildings built in sandstone ashlar, which includes 12 listed buildings.

 

The turret adjacent to Hillsborough Interchange

 

The buildings were completed over a period of 6 years, from 1848 to 1854, with an extent of 8.9 hectares and divided into three terraces at different levels, but several buildings have been demolished, following the commercial redevelopment that took place during the late 1980’s.

 

The regimental institute

Starting at the officers' mess and the regimental institute, which is 108 metres long, I just took a few general photographs of the principal buildings that surround the large car parks to Morrison’s supermarket and didn't look at the details on this occasion.

 

Views of the officers' mess

 

By necessity, I had to stand far away from the buildings to photograph them and didn’t get close to any of them to look at the sandstone from which it has been built, except at the freestanding turret, where it is medium grained and cross-bedded.

 

An information plaque

At a distance, the sandstone appears to be of a uniform buff colour, with very little variation and minimal iron staining and, as with Hillsborough Hall, I think that the Bolehill and Walkley Bank quarries supplying Crawshaw Sandstone would have been best geared up to produce such a large quantity of stone with such consistency.

 

A view of Morrisons supermarket

According to the Conservation Area Appraisal for Grenoside, produced by Sheffield City Council, however, a brief reference to the quarrying industry in the village cites Grenoside Sandstone as the stone used for Hillsborough Barracks – a matter that I will further investigate when returning to photograph the barracks for the British Listed Buildings website.

 

The rear of the officers' mess