A Further Exploration of Darnall

 

Tinsley Park Cemetery

For my last excursion in October 2021, having had a good long walk to look at the sandstones used in the historic buildings of Thurcroft, Brampton-en-le-Morthen and Morthen, I returned to Darnall in Sheffield with my objective to visit the Whitby Road Council School and then take photos of the Cross of Sacrifice in Tinsley Park Cemetery for the British Listed Buildings website. 

 

The western part of Whitby Road Council School

Taking one of the very unreliable buses from Treeton and then connecting with one of the very frequent No. 52 bus services at Handsworth, operated both by First Mainline and Stagecoach – which seems quite ridiculous when the services on other routes in South Yorkshire are being cut back to the bone – I got my first view of the Whitby Road Council School through locked gates. 

 

Whitby Road Council School as seen from Jeffcock Road

Making my way to another set of locked gates on Jeffcock Road, within a couple of minutes I was able to establish that the Whitby Road Council School (1909) by Potter and Sandford has been built in the usual Crawshaw Sandstone from the Bole Hill quarries in Crookes/Walkley. 

 

Whitby Road Council School as seen from Fisher Lane

The architect Henry Ingle Potter had also been responsible for the Malin Bridge Council School (1905), where the most decorative feature is the name of the school inscribed in relief, but I saw no architectural features here that are worth mentioning. 

 

The school boundary wall on Fisher Lane

It was a slightly disappointing way to end a project that had taken me to places in Sheffield that I would never have thought of visiting before; however, as a geologist with a specialist interest in building stones, I was interested in the sandstone used in the boundary wall on Fisher Lane and also on the approach to Tinsley Park Cemetery along Barleywood Road. 

 

A detail of a boundary wall on Barleywood Road

The grey silty sandstone, with planar bedding and cross-lamination is quite typical of the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation (PMCMF) rocks that I had seen at the Advanced Manufacturing Park and around Handsworth. Here, several boundary walls are built with similar stone and this very distinct iron staining is a feature of the historic buildings of Handsworth, which I have always assumed are built with stone from the Handsworth Quarries. 

 

The distribution of PMCMF sandstones around Darnall

The gates, boundary wall, lodge and chapels at Tinsley Park Cemetery are all Grade II Listed but, with these already having photographs added to the British Listed Buildings website, I just took a few general record photographs and didn’t have a close look at the blackened sandstone that has been used to build them. 

 

The gates, lodge and twin chapels at Tinsley Park Cemetery

Walking straight up the road to the top of the cemetery, I just took a couple of photos of the Cross of Sacrifice - designed in 1918 by Sir Reginald Blomfield - in the form of a simple cross with a bronze sword attached, which Historic England describes as being made of Portland stone. 

 

The Cross of Sacrifice at Tinsley Park Cemetery

 

Except for those that were not lit up by the sun, all of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstones made of Portland stonethat I saw, as well as other memorials made in white Italian marble, were strongly coloured by the late afternoon light. 

 

Various CWGC headstones at Tinsley Park Cemetery

 

Although I didn’t take a close look at the texture of the stone used for the Cross of Sacrifice, which looks quite different to that seen in my photos of the headstones, I just thought that it was made of high quality Darley Dale sandstone, which has been used by the CWGC for very many headstones in and around Sheffield.

 

A detail of the Cross of Sacrifice

 

I hadn’t planned to go looking for the CWGC headstones and just had a quick look around on the way back to the entrance to the cemetery, to see if there were any regimental crests that I hadn’t seen before. Although subsequent research on the War Graves Photographic Project website indicates that I can find a few more here, the only one I saw on this occasion was the Canadian Royal Air Force on the headstone of Flight Sergeant R.P. Davies. 

 

The headstone of Flight Sergeant R.P. Davies

Just as I was about to leave the cemetery, I came across a small pile of miscellaneous rocks and soil, which I assumed had been excavated to make one of the graves. As seen in the boundary walls around Darnall, the stone is very fine grained and a muddy grey in colour - with one of the three samples that I collected being weathered to a distinctive ‘ginger nut’ colour.

 

Samples of sandstone from Tinsley Park Cemetery