An Exploration of Halfway

 

A specimen of the Parkgate Rock (21mm diameter coin)

A couple of days after my recce to Charnwood Forest, the plan for my last day out in October 2021 was to have a look at the former Halfway Board School, now the Halfway Nursery Infant School, which was commissioned by the Eckington and Mosborough School Board in Derbyshire. According to the Victorian Society book Building Schools for Sheffield, it was built in 1877 for 70 pupils; however, for some reason the school isn’t marked on the 1894 Ordnance Survey map and first appears on the 1899 edition, which was revised in 1897. 

 

The 1894 Ordnance Survey map of the Halfway area

It is described as a simple village school, with a single storey and symmetrical gabled wings, but there is no mention of the architect and the principal architectural features mentioned on the front elevation, which is at right angles to Station Road, could not be be seen from the public footpath. 

 

The north elevation of the former Halfway Board School

When I arrived at Halfway, having caught the blue route Supertram from Sheffield city centre, the children were in the playground and I couldn’t photograph the main elevation; however, there were no children around the partially obscured north elevation and, after taking a quick snap, I went to photograph the Grade II Listed war memorial on the opposite side of the road. 

 

Halfway War Memorial

 

Built with massive Carboniferous sandstone in the form of a wheel cross, its shaft is decorated with a relief carving of two rifles, a flag, flowers and foliage bound with ribbon and the faces of the moulded foot have relief-carved panels of a field gun enclosed by a wreath. 

 

A detail of Halfway War Memorial

 

With the school children returning to their classrooms, I took a single photo from the school gates, which just serves as a general record of the school and doesn’t enable me to see the stonework closely or make an educated guess on the provenance of the sandstone. 

 

A view of the former Halfway Board School from the entrance gates

 

When planning my walk, which included an investigation of the listed buildings of Mosborough, I used the online 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map and Google Street View to identify the best route through the modern housing estate between Halfway Board School and Mosborough Hall Hotel. 

 

The geology around Halfway and Mosborough

 

On Halfway Drive, when zooming into the bank on the south side of the road, I could just discern some outcrops of the Parkgate Rock, which I had undoubtedly seen in buildings when investigating the area around City Road, but had not yet seen in an outcrop. Having brought my Estwing hammer with me, I found a place where I could get through the undergrowth to obtain a sample. 

 

An outcrop of the Parkgate Rock on Halfway Drive

 

The small outcrop here has a lower section of irregularly bedded flaggy sandstone that passes upwards into much thinner beds. The large sample I obtained from the thicker beds is grey/light brown in colour with some orange Liesegang rings, fine grained and contains numerous flattened clay ironstone nodules. 

 

The Parkgate Rock on Halfway Drive