Geology & Architecture in Ridgeway I

 

A detail of the former Ridgeway Board School

With the unseasonably good weather of November 2021 continuing beyond the first week of the month, having spent a couple of afternoons exploring the historic architecture and building stones of Norton and Aston – parts of Sheffield and Rotherham respectively that I had got to know reasonably well – my next day out was to Ridgeway in North-East Derbyshire, just to the south of the Sheffield boundary. 

 

An Ordnance Survey map showing the location of Ridgeway

I had never been through this part of Derbyshire before but, having discovered that it was served regularly by the No. 252 bus from Sheffield, when researching a possible walk along The Moss from Jordanthorpe to Eckington, I planned a 5 km circular route to incorporate the listed buildings in Ridgeway, Ford and Birley Hay and some of the surrounding countryside – underlain by the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation (PLCMF) strata. 

 

An Ordnance Survey map of the area around Ridgeway

After the ascent to Gleadless from Sheffield, the bus continued for 2.5 km down White Lane, running beneath an escarpment of the Silkstone Rock, before turning sharply to the south at Highlane and then continuing down Main Road into Ridgeway. 

 

The geology of the area around Ridgeway

Having alighted just before Ridgeway Primary School, a single storey building with very little architectural merit that was built by the Eckington School Board in 1873, I just took a couple of record photos from a distance, but I couldn’t really get any ideas about the stone used to build it; however, the 1882 Ordnance Survey map shows active quarries on the Grenoside Sandstone, Parkgate Rock and an unnamed PLCMF sandstone and a disused quarry on the Silkstone Rock. 

 

The 1882 Ordnance Survey map showing various quarries

During my investigations of the historic buildings of Norton, including St. James’ church, I saw a lot of sandstone that often had a strong yellow colouration, which I thought was the Grenoside Sandstone and at Mosborough, the sandstone that I considered to be the Parkgate Rock is very rich in iron, which appears as clay ironstone nodules and as dark red/brown iron staining in a lot of the walling stone. 

 

Ridgeway Primary School

 

Main Road gently slopes down to an area of level ground underlain by mudstones and occupied by playing fields and, just beyond this, I came to Kent House (c1630), which is built with thin courses of a light yellow/brown sandstone, with very occasional rusty brown blocks, and strongly iron banded sandstone used for the large quoins and largely renewed window dressings.

 

Kent House

 

Although I could only view it from the road, of the three sandstone formations quarried in the area, I would say that it is most likely to be built with Grenoside Sandstone. Despite the very thin courses being unlike buildings made of this sandstone that I had seen elsewhere, its uniform yellowish colour suggests that it is neither Parkgate Rock or Silkstone Rock. 

 

Various stone buildings on Main Road

So far, when walking down Main Road from the bus stop - a distance of only 250 metres - I had also encountered the Queens Head and The Swan public houses, the elegant Ridgeway House (1750) and a pair of semi-detached houses that have surprisingly been attached to it. 

 

A converted barn on Main Road

Unusually for a rural location like this, where I would expect the stone to have been quarried from the immediate area, I couldn’t detect any pattern of colours and textures in the sandstone that obviously indicate the same quarry source – as seen in the converted barn opposite The Swan. 

 

Various sandstones in the converted barn

The original barn is built in a grey silty sandstone with an abundance of rusty brown blocks, which is very similar to the stone that I had seen in many historic buildings and boundary walls around Mosborough, with large quoins made of a sandstone that looked like the stone used for dressings at Kent House. The extension to this, however, is built in in a very uniformly coloured yellowish sandstone, which I assume to be the Grenoside Sandstone. 

 

Continuing along Main Road, the noticeably rising ground coincides with the dip slope of an unnamed PLCMF sandstone, with stone built Victorian cottages and terraced houses again showing no consistent use of the same sandstone, and immediately beyond these the road drops down the escarpment.  

A view down the escarpment