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