The Sheffield General Cemetery - Part 2

 

A detail of the block of dolomitic limestone in the Stone Spiral

Continuing my investigation of Sheffield General Cemetery, I followed the path down from the Anglican chapel to the junction of Sandford’s Walk, where I unexpectedly came across the monument to the Sheffield industrialist and philanthropist, Mark Firth.

 

A map from the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust website

Having discovered his role in the establishment of the Sheffield Board Schools and being specifically asked to include his house, Oakbrook, in a talk to the Ranmoor Society in September 2022, I was interested to find this Grade II Listed monument.

 

The monument to Mark Firth

 

As with the Henry Adams monument near the Anglican chapel and the nearby Grade II Listed memorial to James Nicholson, another steel magnate who lived at Moordale in Ranmoor, on this occasion I didn’t have a good look at the sandstone and granite from which it is made.

 

The memorial to James Nicholson

 

Continuing to the William Parker monument (1837), which was erected by the merchants and manufacturers of Sheffield, I just took a few photos from a distance that show that it is made with a pale coloured stone. The Historic England description refers to it as being constructed with white marble but, according to the General Cemetery Geological Trail, it is Permian dolomitic limestone.

 

The William Parker memorial

In Rotherham and Doncaster, where the Cadeby Formation outcrops and is used extensively as a building stone, I have encountered headstones made of this limestone but I can’t recall seeing a monument like this. It is designed in the style of a small circular Greek temple, known as a tholos, with fluted columns, Corinthian capitals and an inscribed cornice.

 

A detail of fluted columns and Corinthian capitals

 

I then retraced my steps to the Nonconformist Chapel (c1836), where the entrance front has a tetrastyle Greek Doric portico with a full entablature and pediment. Although ostensibly designed in a Classical style, Samuel Worth also included an Egyptian Revival door surround with a dove carved in relief above it.

 

The Nonconformist Chapel

 

The large ashlar blocks and the drums to the columns are made of very course grained Chatsworth Grit - as seen in the Egyptian Gate (1836), the coping stones on the Cemetery Road boundary wall and probably Montague House - which here contains significant quantities of small pebbles.

 

The doorway to the Nonconformist Chapel

 

My next stop was the memorial to George Bennet (c1850), a founder of the Sheffield Sunday School Movement, where my main interest was the severely weathered white marble relief sculpture, which is set in a sandstone ashlar pedestal. 

The George Bennet monument

 

Following the path down to the bottom of the escarpment, I passed by the dilapidated two tiered catacombs, which is also a Grade II Listed structure designed by Samuel Worth, and carried on until I reached the Stone Spiral, created in 2004 as part of the memorial garden and containing large blocks of various sandstones, limestones, granites and Welsh slate.

 

The catacombs

I first saw this interesting educational resource a few years after it had been laid out, when the different colours and textures could be clearly distinguished but, after 18 years, general weathering, the city atmosphere and algae have all taken their toll on the appearance of the various stones that can be found here.

 

The Stone Spiral

 

At the time, having often seen stone cleaners at work with high pressure washers, when working in the building restoration industry in London, I thought that these could all be cleaned back to something like their original condition, provided that a source of water was available, at relatively little cost – making them once again fit for purpose rather than looking like a random pile of rocks.

 

Dolomitic limestone from the Cadeby Formation

 

Coming to the end of the path, I was interested to see three more blocks of igneous rock: a red granite from Sweden, a monzonite known as larvikite from Norway and Rubislaw granite from Aberdeen in Scotland, which can be found in Victorian and Edwardian buildings and monuments throughout the United Kingdom.

 

Various igneous rocks adjacent to the gatehouse

I finished my brief exploration of Sheffield General Cemetery at the gatehouse, with its flanking lodges (1836), designed by Samuel Worth in the Greek Revival style and built on a wide bridge that straddles the Porter Brook.

 

Views of the gatehouse

 

The gathouse is again built with the very coarse grained Chatsworth Grit from the Millstone Grit Group, which commonly contains sub-rounded fingernail sized pebbles, but here it contains much larger angular fragments that I had never seen before in this rock formation.

 

A large angular fragment in the masonry of the gatehouse

Leaving the cemetery, I briefly followed the intriguingly named Frog Walk to photograph the crossing of the gatehouse over the Porter Brook, where I noticed the outcrop of an unnamed flaggy Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation (PLCMF) sandstone – finishing yet another fascinating investigation of the geology, building stones, architecture and history of Sheffield.

 

An outcrop of sandstone in the bank of the Porter Brook