An Exploration of Ranmoor - Part 2

 

A Storth Crescent Land Society house on Storth Lane

Continuing my exploration of Ranmoor, as part of my preparation for a talk to the Ranmoor Society on the subject of the local geology and architecture, I headed up Ranmoor Road after having a quick look at the stonework of Ranmoor Inn and the old lodge to Ranmoor Grange.

 

The old church hall on Ranmoor Road

I immediately stopped to look at No. 5 Ranmoor Road, a converted church hall that first appears on the 1894 Ordnance Survey map and has recently been cleaned, which reveals a buff coloured stone with some yellow variation that looks like the Crawshaw Sandstone used for the Sheffield Board Schools, with uniformly coloured medium grained gritstone for the dressings. 

 

Cleaned masonry at the old church hall on Ranmoor Road

On the other side of the road, a long boundary wall is built with thin bedded sandstone, with a significant amount of iron staining on the joint faces. This reminds me of the walling that I had seen when investigating the historic buildings of Fulwood, which I thought probably came from flaggy beds in the Rough Rock; however, the Ranmoor Cliff quarries in the Crawshaw Sandstone are only less than 300 metres away and this stone could have been brought from here. 

 

Boundary walling on Ranmoor Road

 

From the path, I could just get a glimpse of the early Victorian Ranmoor Grange, which was converted into apartments in 2002 and presumably cleaned, with the walling stone and dressings looking similar to those used for the old church hall. 

 

Ranmoor Grange

Continuing up Ranmoor Road to the junction with Ranmoor Crescent, which was developed after the Ranmoor Crescent Land Society was formed in 1874, I encountered various stone built houses that existed when the area was resurveyed for the 1855 map. 

 

Various houses on Ranmoor Road marked on the 1855 map

On the day, which was my first venture into the Ranmoor Conservation Area, my aim was to just get a general appreciation of its character and I didn’t examine any of the stonework closely; however, from my general photographs I notice that, beneath the dirt, the walling of Nos. 41 to 45 has a high proportion of rusty brown blocks, like the old buildings around Fulwood. 

 

Rock Formations used for building stone in the Ranmoor area

Apart from the Ranmoor Cliff quarries in the Crawshaw Sandstone, others in rock formations such as the Chatsworth Grit, Rough Rock and Loxley Edge Rock were less than 2 km away. For the better quality houses, the costs of bringing in stone from the biggest quarries at Bole Hill, for example, wouldn’t have been prohibitive and this may have been used at Clevedon House. 

 

Clevedon House

Several houses are set back from the road and many aren’t noteworthy, with one particular exception being an Italianate style lodge (1874), built in a yellowish sandstone, by the Sheffield architect John Dodsley Webster, who was responsible for other large houses in Ranmoor. 

 

The old lodge by John Dodsley Webster

Arriving at Storth Lane, I stopped briefly to photograph the Grade II Listed electricity transformer, before continuing down the hill to the entrance of Nether House where an old building with a lifting beam, which may be related to the now demolished Rand Moor Cutlery Works, has an unusual kerb like detail at the junction with the road. 

 

A kerb detail made of large Chatsworth Grit road setts

Unlike the other sandstones that I had seen in Ranmoor, this is quite clearly identified as being from the Chatsworth Grit, with is very coarse grain size and grey colour. This was quarried from various places along the southern edge of the Rivelin Valley, less than 2 km to the north, and can be seen further down Storth Lane in a boundary wall. 

 

Chatsworth Grit used for a boundary wall on Storth Lane

The Chatsworth Grit is probably best known for its very coarse and often very pebbly sandstone, which forms massive blocks that make it very suitable for gatepiers and large blocks of masonry for civil engineering structures; however, it does also occur as thin, flaggy beds, which I have seen on Redmires Road and I think this has been used here. 

 

Flaggy Rough Rock used for a boundary wall on Storth Lane

This greyish stone contrasts strongly with the flaggy sandstone used in another dry stone boundary wall a little further down the road, which is fine grained and has strong orange/brown iron staining and is very probably from the Rough Rock, which is very flaggy in the Sheffield area and was widely used for stone roofing tiles. 

 

Another boundary wall on Storth Lane