Historic Buildings on Glossop Road I

 

A salvaged headstop at St. Marks's church

On the Monday following a rather depressing Saturday afternoon in Rotherham, I made the most of another sunny day in late November by further exploring the suburbs of Broomhill and Broomhall in Sheffield, with my primary objective being to photograph its listed buildings. 

 

A selection of listed buildings in Broomhill and Broomhall

Except for a quick walk around the Broomhall and Endcliffe Conservation Areas, just over a week earlier, I had never explored this part of the city and, having entered a postcode in the Listed Buildings Photo Challenge search form on the British Listed Buildings website, I just planned a route around some of the buildings that did not yet have a photo. 

 

Broomfield House (L) and No. 440 Glossop Road (R)

Taking the No. 120 bus from High Street and alighting at the bus stop on Glossop Road just beyond the junction with Clarkehouse Road, I immediately noticed the Grade II Listed No. 440 Glossop Road (c1840) and the unlisted Broomfield House, which was built some time between 1851 and 1889 (according to the old Ordnance Survey maps) on the adjacent plot. 

 

No. 440 Glossop Road

Looking at these in bright sunshine from the opposite side of the road, I couldn’t see any difference between the sandstone used for these buildings but, when examining my high resolution photos, I can see that the sandstone used for No. 440 has a moderate amount of iron staining and feint Liesegang rings, whereas that used for Broomfield House is uniformly buff in colour. 

 

Broomfield House

Without having got close enough to examine the sandstones used for these buildings, I have just assumed that No. 440 is built with a local sandstone, but Broomfield House may well be built with Stoke Hall stone (Kinderscout Grit) from Grindleford in Derbyshire or Crosland Hill stone (Rough Rock) from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, both of which had by now been brought to Sheffield to be used respectively for dressings in the Sheffield Board Schools and for the ashlar at the Central Schools on Leopold Street. 

 

Crosland Hill stone (L) and Stoke Hall stone (R)

Next on my list of buildings to photograph was St. Mark’s church, which was completed in 1871 to a neo-Gothic design by William Henry Crossland, but during the Sheffield Blitz in WWII it was largely destroyed by an incendiary bomb, with only the tower and porch left remaining. 

 

St. Mark's church

The architect George Gaze Pace restored the tower in 1955 and the church was rebuilt in a modernist style between 1961 and 1963, with a reinforced concrete frame being clad in irregularly coursed rock-faced masonry, which uses coarse grained sandstone that has a substantial amount of pink to red colour variation, which I had not seen before in Sheffield. 

 

Artificial stone dressings and tracery

Very unusually, the church is laid out with an irregular polygonal floor plan, which was likened by Pace to an extended hexagon and the fabric makes extensive use of artificial stone for lintels, transoms and for the irregular tracery to the east window. Personally, I am not a great fan of this church - as also with Christ Church in Fulwood - and I was mainly curious about the provenance of the sandstones used for the new church and the original tower. 

 

Stonework in the south elevation of the nave

Although without examining it with my hand lens, looking more closely at a section of masonry on the south side of the nave, the general colour variation in the sandstone does have some similarities with local gritty sandstones like the Chatsworth Grit or even the Loxley Edge Rock; however, I suspect the quarrying industry in Sheffield, which unlike West Yorkshire served only local needs, was no longer able to supply the quantities of stone needed for this church. 

 

The tower

Perhaps an extensive search in the Sheffield City Archives and Local Studies Library might throw further light on the matter but, except for lists of quarries produced by Farey (1811), Hunt (1858) and the List of Mines and Quarries (1897) held at the British Geological Survey – which just provide brief details of the geological formation worked and some of the products – documentation seems to be quite scarce. 

 

A detail of sandstone used in the tower

Referring to the couple of photographs of the tower that I took, the sandstone used is yellowish/buff in colour, has a moderate amount of iron staining and seems to be quite soft - contrasting with the more durable sandstone used for the dressings and headstops - but the whole building really needs a more thorough examination.

 

Headstops on the old south porch

Having had a brief look at the exterior, I popped inside the church but, although its modern stained glass is considered to be quite noteworthy, there isn't much stonework of great interest to see, with the highlight being the Derbyshire fossil marble used for the pulpit.

 

The pulpit

 

A Saturday Afternoon in Rotherham

 

A specimen of barytes in the Clifton Park Museum mineral collection

Back in 1995, shortly after I arrived in Rotherham in what could not be described as a career move, as the photographer and a geologist with specialist interests in building stone, I helped my good friend Michael Clark with the production of his booklet – The Building Stones of Rotherham. 

 

The Building Stones of Rotherham

This coincided with my involvement with the South Yorkshire RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) Group, as the principal surveyor, publicist and one time chairman, during which time I played a crucial part in raising the awareness of geological conservation in Rotherham – including the production of the Anston Stones Wood Geological Trail, which proved very popular with the general public and also with organisations such as the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, who have undertaken a few field trips there. 

 

The Anston Stones Wood Geological Trail

 

With various people at Clifton Park Museum getting involved with the RIGS initiative, this led to a contract to catalogue and package their collection of 1500 minerals and to assist with new museum displays following its refurbishment. As a writer, when providing illustrated articles for the German stone trade magazine, Stone Plus, until its demise in November 2011, I also reported on the refurbishment of Clifton Park and various developments in Rotherham town centre. 

 

Articles about Rotherham in Stone Plus magazine

With the South Yorkshire RIGS Group eventually being incorporated into the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT) in 2008, an organisation that mainly comprises long since retired university academics and school teachers – who neither contributed to any of the above or live in Rotherham – I think that I can feel rightly aggrieved, when both Rotherham MBC and Clifton Park Museum have since relied on the very part time and essentially free service provided by these pensioners, rather than actually paying someone with a good professional track record in Rotherham like me. 

 

A view of Forge Island

 

Especially since Rotherham town centre has long since entered a period of very rapid economic decline, with swathes of empty shops and needlessly demolished buildings – with no worthwhile plans for their replacement and the somewhat fanciful Forge Island Development hailed as the great saviour – I now very rarely venture into Rotherham town centre. 

 

The Old School of Science and Art

Following my day out with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group to the Shirtcliffe Valley, however, I decided to make the most of another dry and sunny day in November to combine an essential visit to Tesco supermarket, with a quick visit to a friend in Clifton that I hadn’t seen in a very long time and take a few photos for the British Listed Buildings website – starting at the Old School of Science and Art (1888) on Effingham Street, which provides a good example of the use of Rotherham Red sandstone.

 

The entrance to the old town hall shopping centre

It was added to the old Town Hall, which was opened in 1853, remodelled in 1897 and is also built in the same Rotherham Red sandstone, with a bright red, presumably Permo-Triassic sandstone used for the window surrounds and other dressings. 

 

Nos. 8-12 Doncaster Gate

Making my way up Howard Street and along to Doncaster Gate, I stopped to photograph the unlisted three bay, three storey building that comprises Nos. 8-12 and which was built at some time between 1924 and 1934. For some reason it was omitted from Mike Clark’s booklet, but it provides an example of Ancaster limestone, with differential weathering of the ashlar blocks clearly showing the ripple marks that are a characteristic of this stone. 

 

Carboniferous limestone used for landscaping on Doncaster Gate

Continuing up the north side of Doncaster Gate, past three unremarkable turn of the C20 brick built houses, I stopped to have a quick look at the karst like Carboniferous limestone that has been used for landscaping in one of the front gardens – a practice that would not be permitted today. 

 

Blocks of Ancaster limestone in the Rock Garden

Walking up the hill until I reached Clifton Lane and, entering Clifton Park, I then followed the path up to through the Rock Garden, which had large rough blocks of Ancaster limestone added to it during the refurbishment of the park back in 2010. 

 

The stable block to Clifton House

The late C18 stable block to Clifton House, the wall and the extension to the museum and Clifton House itself (now Clifton Park Museum) are respectively built in Rotherham Red sandstone, Birchover stone from Derbyshire and a light brown sandstone that is probably from a quarry in the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation around Kimberworth.

 

Clifton Park Museum

Entering Clifton Park Museum by the main entrance, I didn’t bother to take further photos of the polished Carboniferous crinoidal limestone - Mandale stone - that was originally supplied by the quaintly named Once-a-week Quarry and which I have seen as large slabs in Rowsley. 

 

Various museum displays

I briefly looked at the geology displays, where various stuffed animals have now replaced information panels and the replica tree stump of the clubmoss Lepidodendron and other Coal Measures fossils – a downgrading of the geology content that is supposedly justified by the fact that these all existed in the Quaternary Period. 

 

A small display of rocks and fossils

Clifton Park Museum used to have a very good geology section, until it was replaced by the Rockingham Pottery, which attracted grant funding. Although a reasonable effort was made to produce a half decent display after the refurbishment in 2004, the current management don’t seem to like geology and the very limited mineral displays have been dumbed down to the extent that birthstones are given undue prominence over more impresive specimens. 

 

The display of minerals

More than 4 years after I quietly informed the last remaining curator that the mineral barytes in the small display was mislabelled as calcite, who then had the insolence to blame me for this mistake, this still had not been rectified. With the same person then informing me that ‘proper geologists’, i.e. volunteers from SAGT, had been brought in to repackage the entire collection of minerals after damage by the 2007 floods – later slipping up by telling me that it was fully insured – this added insult to injury and ensured that, without due respect and payment, I would never lift a finger to help Rotherham MBC again. 

 

An incorrectly labelled specimen of barytes

A Field Trip in the Shirtcliffe Valley

 

Members of the Sheffield U3A Geology Group at the end of the day

Following on from a good walk around parts of the Broomhill and Endcliffe Conservation Areas, to photograph a few of the many listed buildings, a few days later I was leading the Sheffield U3A Geology Group around the Shirecliffe Valley – a green space that I had discovered during the early months of the COVID-19 Pandemic lockdown.

 

A map of the Shirtcliffe Valley

The group had reconvened in July 2021, after a break of 17 months, but with our group leader having been suffering with sciatica since our previous outing to Charnwood Forest, we had not been able to undertake a recce of any of the places that had been proposed during our last indoor meeting in January 2020. 

 

The geology of the Shirtcliffe Valley

Having visited the Shirtcliffe Valley a few times since, at different times of the year, I had managed to find good exposures of the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation (PMCMF) along Shirtcliff Brook, the Woodhouse Rock in an old sandstone quarry  and a small exposure of the Swallow Wood Coal – as described in this Language of Stone Blog on the 8th, 24th and 27th of January and the 10th of August and 5th of October 2021 – and I thought that these would be suitable for a short half day field trip. 

 

The itinerary for the field trip in the Shirtcliffe Valley

I sent out the usual details of the field trip to the members, but subsequently had the idea of asking Pat Howells of the Friends of Shirtcliffe if she would like to join us, to supplement my knowledge of the geology with her extensive experience of investigating the natural and industrial history of the valley, which once had several small coal mines. 

 

A section from the British Geological Survey map

After introducing Pat to the 14 others in the group who turned up on the day, we made our way down to Smelter Wood, where one of our observant members noticed a path that we were walking along was on an exposed bed of the Swallow Wood Coal. 

 

A typical Coal Measures cyclothem

We then looked at a heavily vegetated seam of this coal alongside the path that runs next to Shirtcliff Brook, before I got down into the streambed to demonstrate that the grey mudstone here is slowly turning into clay. It had been my intention to introduce the group to the concept of cyclothems in the Coal Measures, as we would hopefully see on the rest of our walk. 

 

Mudstone weathering to yellow clay

 

It soon became very obvious that Pat had a lot to say about the valley, showing us the position of various old spoil heaps, covered shafts and other remnants of the coal mining industry, which I would never have noticed. By the time we stopped for lunch, we were running way behind my proposed schedule, but I was just happy to go with the flow. 

 

A sample of the Woodhouse Rock (21 mm diameter coin)

At the old quarry on The Edge, we looked at the rock exposures that can barely be seen in summer and, after collecting a small sample of the Woodhouse Rock (now marked as an unnamed PMCMF sandstone on the map), we continued down to the east entrance of Shirtcliff Wood at Beaver Hill Road, where we all admired the still living stump of a huge black poplar tree and the sections of trunk that have been cut off it. 

 

Viewing the remains of the black poplar tree

Returning to the main path, I realised that a good exploration of the streambanks would have to wait for another day. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the sun no longer illuminated the stream banks, one member was grumbling about her feet, another had disappeared to collect a grandchild and the paths, which had been churned up by dirt bikes after a period of heavy rain, were in places difficult to negotiate. The few of us who had kept going to the end, however, briefly stopped for a group photograph to record a thoroughly enjoyable and surprisingly long day.

 

A group member viewing a stream bank outcrop of flaggy sandstone

 

The Botanical Gardens & Endcliffe Park

 

The Jubilee Monument in Endcliffe Park

Arriving at Sheffield Botanical Gardens, having had a quick exploration of the historic architecture in parts of the Broomhill and Endcliffe Conservation Areas, I still had several listed buildings and various other structures and monuments to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website, before finishing for the day.

 

The 'Paxton' Pavilions at Sheffield Botanical Gardens

The first of these were the two Grade II* Listed south-west and north-east glasshouses (1838), which form part of the 'Paxton' Pavilions by Benjamin Broomhead Taylor, who also co-designed the Cutlers' Hall (1832) in Sheffield with Samuel Worth. 

 

The north-east pavilion

The pavilions were restored in 2003, with new planting beds built with Stoke Hall stone from the Kinderscout Grit in Grindleford and Rough Rock from the Crosland Hill quarry in Huddersfield used for the floors. The stone to the external pilasters had apparently been laid face bedded and repaired with Portland cement render, leading to its deterioration. Some of these have been refaced with new stone and new Corinthian capitals added, but I did not get near enough to closely study the stonework on this occasion. 

 

A fossil Lepidodendron tree stump

Having photographed the pavilions, I then went to find the Evolution Garden, in which there is a fine example of an Upper Carboniferous fossil tree stump – the giant club moss Lepidodendron - which is approximately 310 million years old, with several large lumps of coal beside it. 

 

Coal in the Evolution Garden

Heading down to the south entrance, I stopped briefly to photograph the south lodge, which was presumably built at the same time as the pavilions and main gateway (1836-38). Looking at a distance, the rock-faced iron stained sandstone is quite unlike the very uniformly buff coloured stone, which is probably Stoke Hall stone, used for the ‘Paxton’ Pavilions. 

 

The south lodge

Continuing down to the south entrance, I stopped briefly to photograph the Grade II Listed gateway and railings (c1900), which are built of buff medium grained gritstone that looks exactly like the stone used for the pavilions. 

 

The south gateway at Sheffield Botanical gardens

I then walked down to Ecclesall Road, where I took a brief diversion to photograph the reconstituted stone piers to the gates and boundary walls at the former synagogue (1930) on Wilson Road, before continuing to Endcliffe Park. 

 

A detail of a gatepier at the former Wilson Road synagogue

 

Stopping to photograph the brick built Arts and Crafts style pavilion and lodge (1891), I went to find the Grade II Listed Jubilee monument and railing (1897), which is a dolmen like construction made of large boulders of coarse grained Chatsworth Grit, with the top stone inscribed, dated and containing a coat of arms. 

 

The Jubilee monument

 

On the previous occasions that I have visited Endcliffe Park, I had always approached it from the opposite direction and never noticed that the Jubilee monument was there, but this park is full of interesting details - such as the granite memorial to the 100th centenary of the ending of World War I, which I also never noticed before. 

 

The WWI Centenary Memorial

When planning my walk from the centre of Broomhill to Endcliffe Park, it had partly been my intention to start preparing an illustrated talk for the Ranmoor Society in September 2022 – to describe the relationship between the historic architecture and the underlying geology in a part of Sheffield that I don't know particularly well. 

 

A meal at Tuk Tuk Thai Street Food

It was also the occasion of my birthday and, having noted that the Tuk Tuk Thai Street Food restaurant had opened a few months earlier, I was very keen to try it out – especially since I had not visited Khao Gaeng Thai in Leeds for a long time, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. 

 

Campo Viejo Rioja Garnacha

Returning home after a very good meal, I enjoyed a nice bottle of Campo Viejo Rioja Garnacha, while contemplating my next day out in Sheffield with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group - to explore the geology, natural history and industrial archaeology of the Shirtcliffe Valley. 

 

The Shirtcliffe Valley