Westbourne Road to Clarkehouse Road

 

A detail of a boundary wall on Westbourne Road

During my walk along Glossop Road, to photograph various historic buildings that effectively span the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837-1901, I encountered several different sandstones from the Millstone Grit Group and the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation. 

 

A geological map of the area underlying Broomhill and Broomhall

Looking at the geological map of the part of Sheffield that includes the Broomhill and Broomhall Conservation Areas, the formations underlying the area – the Rough Rock, the Loxley Edge Rock and the Grenoside Sandstone – have all produced building stone. Also, the fine grained and highly laminated Greenmoor Rock was particularly suitable for paving, steps, setts, sills, heads, grave slabs and headstones. 

 

The 1855 Ordnance Survey map with the location of quarries

The 1855 Ordnance Survey map of the area shows several small quarries, some marked as disused, which would have served the local needs of a very open and leafy part of Sheffield that had steadily been growing since the open of the turnpike road to Manchester in 1821; however, the Stoke Hall quarry, producing top quality uniformly buff coloured and evenly grained sandstone, opened in 1835 and William Flockton had specified similar stone to build The Mount (1830), King Edward VII School (1838) and Mount Villa and Broomspring (1840). 

 

Locations of the principal areas of quarrying in Victorian times

In the second half of the C19, with the building of large houses such as Oakbrook, Endcliffe Hall and Tapton Hall by the owners of steel making and cutlery businesses, the demand for the best Derbyshire stone for ashlar and dressings would have continued, with the spectacular growth of the affluent western suburbs drawing upon more local quarries to provide stone for the walls of substantial houses, garden walls, gate piers, pavements and roads. 

 

A row of detached houses on Westbourne Road

 

Continuing my exploration of Broomhill at Westbourne Road, a row of modest detached houses showed the familiar pattern of locally quarried walling stone, probably the Crawshaw Sandstone from Bole Hill in Crookes/Walkley, with a massive medium to coarse grained variety for dressings. 

 

Glimpses of Westbourne School

My efforts to photograph the Grade II Listed Ashdell (c1850), now Westbourne School, and its gates and boundary wall for the British Listed Buildings website were foiled by the fact that I had arrived at lunchtime, with a constant flow of pupils in and out of the various entrances. Moving on to try and find the Radio Sheffield building, I could not get beyond a secured entrance to the private apartment block and carried on down to Southbourne Road, which is dominated by sizeable detached and semi-detached Victorian villas.

 

Views of various houses on Southbourne Road

Reaching Clarkehouse Road, I stopped briefly to No. 70, which is not listed but its cleaned stonework shows that the iron stained light brown sandstone has been used for both the rock-faced walling and all of the dressings. 

 

No. 70 Clarkehouse Lane

 

I didn’t get close enough to get any appreciation of the grain size and bedding characteristics of this sandstone but, looking at its colour, it wouldn’t be out of place amongst the various terraces of houses built in Crookes.

 

Views of Sheffield High School for Girls

Turning up Rutland Park, I just took a few quick snaps of the Grade II Listed original Girl’s High School (1884) by Tanner and Smith of London and the adjacent converted house (c1875), which are the two main buildings at Sheffield High School for Girls. Historic England have also listed the various gate posts and boundary walls, for No. 8 and No. 10 Rutland Park, where different sandstones have been used for the walling, copings and cappings to the piers. 

 

Piers and walling at Nos. 8 and 10 Rutland Park

 

Walking down to the end of Rutland Park, I then went to find the disused Ornamental Chimney (c1875), which formed part of the heating system for a range of now demolished greenhouses. With a considerable part of the structure covered in ivy, I just took a few general record photos of them before continuing back down to Clarkehouse Road. 

 

The Ornamental Chimney