Architecture in Broomhill & Endcliffe I

 

Broomhill Community Library

 

My exploration of Ridgeway in the second week of November 2022 proved to be one of my more productive outings, having learned about its history of making edge tools and also acquiring a much better understanding of the structural geology of the area to the south of Sheffield. 

 

Listed buildings requiring photographs as at November 2021

A few days later on a sunny Saturday afternoon, which coincided with my birthday, I set off from Treeton to Sheffield, with a plan to photograph several listed buildings in the very attractive suburbs of Broomhill and Endcliffe for the British Listed Buildings website, before treating myself at Tuk Tuk Thai Street Food. 

 

9-17 Taptonville Road

Taking the No. 120 bus from High Street in Sheffield, I alighted at the Glossop Road/Ashgate Road bus stop and took a few photos of the terrace of brick built houses at 6-20 Ashgate Road (c1850), before moving on to Taptonville Road, where the three pairs of Grade II Listed semi-detached Classical style villas (c1855) – 9-11, 13-15 and 17-19 – are considered to be one of the highlights of the Broomhill Conservation Area. 

 

Broomhill and Endcliffe on the 1855 Ordnance Survey map

Many owners of the steel and cutlery businesses lived in or near to Broomhill and, spurred by the opening of the turnpike road to Manchester in 1821, a middle-class residential suburb with Classical and Gothic style villas developed in the 1830’s. None of the houses on Taptonville Road appear on the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, but development of the area to the north of Fulwood Road started in earnest from this time onwards.

 

Broomhill Community Library

 

Looking at the buildings from the pavement, and also the houses at No. 244 Fulwood Road and Broomhill Community Library, the sandstone is quite uniform in colour and, although containing some iron banding, the latter does not make any significant contribution to the overall colour and texture of the principal elevations. 

 

No. 244 Fulwood Road

Several quarries of varying sizes can be seen on the 1855 map, all of which are less than 2 km away, with the biggest quarries extracting the Crawshaw Sandstone at Crookes/Walkley and the Rough Rock on Lydgate Lane. 

 

Quarries on the Crawshaw Sandstone and Rough Rock

None of these quarries still exist and exposures of these rock formations are few and far between in Sheffield and assigning a provenance to the sandstone is not easy; however, having seen the Crawshaw Sandstone in very many Sheffield Board Schools and the Rough Rock during my exploration of Crosspool and Fulwood, I would say that the former has been used for better quality houses, with the latter reserved for boundary walls and houses at the lower end of the market. 

 

The lodge to Endcliffe Crescent

Making my way down Fulwood Road, along which many of the above mentioned houses of the C19 industrialists are only visible from the top deck of a bus, I came across the lodge to Endcliffe Crescent - an estate development by the Endcliffe Building Company in 1824, which is the earliest example of ‘picturesque’ suburban development in Sheffield. 

 

The lodge to Tapton Cliffe

The sandstone used here is buff in colour with some iron staining, has planar bedding and is laid in thin courses – a feature that I have noticed is very common in the Crawshaw Sandstone – and this is seen again in the lodge to Tapton Cliffe, the house built in 1864 by the cutler John Yeomans Cowlishaw, and the boundary walls on Shore Lane.

 

Crawshaw Sandstone used for boundary walling on Shore Lane

Continuing along Fulwood Road past more large detached and semi-detached houses, which are set in substantial grounds that overlook the Porter Valley, I came to yet another lodge (c1850) – this time at Oakbrook, the house built by the industrialist and philanthropist Mark Firth. 

 

The lodge to Oakbrook

 

The general colour, planar bedding and relatively thin courses of stone suggest that this is a further example use of the Crawshaw Sandstone, with pink Peterhead granite used for colonnettes on the windows - a material that I didn't expect to see here.

 

A Peterhead granite colonnette