Historic Buildings in Fulwood - Part 2

 

A detail of the Old School House on School Green Lane

Leaving Christ Church, which is near to the northern boundary of the Fulwood Conservation Area, I followed Brookhouse Hill down to the modern centre of Fulwood, passing over bedrock that comprises an unnamed sandstone and the Crawshaw Sandstone, which together produce a noticeable feature in the landscape. 

 

The geology around Fulwood

 

Interestingly, the wall that forms the southern boundary of the churchyard is composed of well squared and coursed sandstone to the east of the main entrance on Brookhouse Hill but where the slope steepens noticeably to the west, the lower section – now partly a retaining wall - comprises irregularly bedded flaggy sandstone. 

 

The boundary wall to Christ Church

 

Both have a similar colouration, with iron staining, which is emphasised on the joints of the lower walling, but it doesn’t have the dark rusty brown colour as seen earlier on my walk. Although there are no quarries in the immediate area marked on the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, there are places along the Crawshaw Rock escarpment, where the LIDAR map seems to indicate that there may have been some small scale quarrying.

 

A LIDAR map of the area around the Crawshaw Sandstone

Carrying on down to the junction with Crimicar Lane, various unlisted stone built later Victorian and Edwardian houses, together with their boundary walls, add character to the Conservation Area and these continue further down Brookhouse Hill to Whiteley Lane. 

 

The Fulwood Conservation Area

At the bottom of Whiteley Lane, Brookhouse Farm provides another example of sandstone walling that contains a high proportion of dark rusty brown blocks, which I had seen earlier on my walk at the Old Coffee House and the Guildhall. 

 

Brookhouse Farm

 

A little further up Whiteley Lane, the mid C18 Chapel House and the adjoining Old Fulwood Chapel (1729), both of which are Grade II Listed, are built out of a very similar sandstone that is well bedded and laid in thin courses, with massive coarse grained sandstone used for the dressings. 

 

The Chapel House and Old Fulwood Chapel

 

Continuing up Whiteley Lane and on to School Green Lane, the Old School House (1736) again contains a high proportion of dark rusty brown blocks in its walling, as does the boundary wall, which contains a mixture of flaggy and more massive sandstone. 

 

The Old School House

The Rough Rock underlies this part of Fulwood and although I have not yet managed to see the extensive exposures in the Brown Edge quarries, from my experience of seeing this formation in and around the Whinfell Quarry Garden at Whirlow and along the Limb Brook, I suspect that the sandstone used in the oldest houses in Fulwood are quarried from it. 

 

Chatsworth Grit dressings at the Old School House

 

The dressings are made of a greyish massive sandstone that has a completely different colour and texture, which I think is probably from the Chatsworth Grit and a similar very coarse, often pebbly sandstone is used for the kerbs. Further to the north, as seen in Leeds and Huddersfield, the Rough Rock is often pebbly, but this is not a feature of the formation in Sheffield. 

 

Unusual kerbstones made of Chatsworth Grit