An Exploration of Malin Bridge

 

An example of the Loxley Edge Rock on Dykes Lane

Continuing my investigation of Walkley, having had a quick look at the stonework at the former Morley Street Board School, I walked down past the allotments to Watersmeet Street and carried on to Malin Bridge, where the rivers Loxley and Rivelin converge. 

 

Watersmeet Island

I stopped to have another look at the part of the riverbed at Watersmeet Island, which in previous visits I noted has an unusually high amount of rusty brown iron staining. The Upper Carboniferous rocks around Sheffield often have a very iron content and ochreous deposits are often seen in streams where there has been microbial weathering of pyrite associated with coal seams and are very often discharged from old coal mining adits. 

 

The River Loxley at Malin Bridge

This staining seems to largely derive from the lowest stretch of the River Loxley, as seen in the river next to the Grade II Listed former Malin Bridge corn mill, which has one of the few remaining examples of an undershot water wheel in Britain. 

 

The former Malin Bridge corn mill

Looking closely at the stonework, the sandstone is very coarse grained, variable in colour, from buff to rusty brown and, in places, it has well defined graded beds. It is quite unlike the Crawshaw Sandstone that I had seen to date on my travels and lacks the pebbly beds that are a characteristic of the Chatsworth Grit. 

 

Coarse grained sandstone used for walling

Referring to the geological map, the predominant sandstone found around Malin Bridge is the Loxley Edge Rock, which I think is most likely to be the source of the stone for the corn mill, although the Middle Band Rock, which is not recorded in the geological memoir as being used as a building stone, also occurs in the area. 

 

The geology around Malin Bridge

Having noted the physical characteristics of this stone, I went to find a recently erected relief sculpture by the Sheffield based letter cutter/stonemason Steve Roche in the car park of the newly built Lidl supermarket. Carved in an unspecified massive buff sandstone, it depicts items that were included in insurance claims by landowners in the area, whose property was destroyed in the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864. 

 

A sculpture by Steve Roche at the Lidl supermarket

The very patchy wetting of the wall by the recent rain rather spoiled its appearance and, making a mental note to come back and photograph it another day, I began my walk up Dykes Lane on the way to Wadsley, where the transition from the low lying soft mudstones of the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation to the gritty Loxley Edge Rock forms a steep incline. 

 

Handrails on Dykes Lane

As I had already discovered in Walkley, the junctions of the roads and footpaths in Malin Bridge have also been carefully designed to accommodate the needs of pedestrians when walking up and down the hills in this part of Sheffield – as at Blake Street - with handrails in place to enable them to cope with the very slippery slopes in winter. 

 

A carefully designed path on Dykes Lane

Carrying on up Dykes Lane, I had a very quick look at St. Mark’s church and another interesting building on the corner with Hibberd Place but, with 14 more buildings in Wadsley and Hillsborough still to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website, I just took a few quick snaps to add to my general records. 

 

St. Mark's church

With my next objective for the day being to briefly survey the stonework of the Malin Bridge Council School, I couldn’t help but notice another example of what I presume to be the Loxley Edge Rock at the end terrace house on the corner of Dykes Lane and Ellenbro Road.  

The terraced house on the corner of Dykes Lane and Ellenbro Road