City Road Cemetery in Sheffield

 

A detail of the Blitz Grave

A few days after my recce to prepare the March field trip for the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, I took advantage of a bright sunny afternoon to have another short walk in Sheffield, mainly with the aim to photograph a handful of buildings for the British Listed Buildings website. 

 

Listed buildings around City Road

The first of these were to be found in the City Road Cemetery, which I had only walked through on my way from Manor Top to Manor Lodge towards the end of 2018, but firstly I wanted to take a closer look at the boundary wall, which is made of a coarse grained sandstone. I had always assumed that it was Chatsworth Grit but, having seen coarse Loxley Edge Rock with a similar colour variation at Malin Bridge and Wadsley, now I wasn’t so sure. 

 

The boundary wall at City Road Cemetery

The only building of any substance that I am aware is built with Loxley Edge Rock is the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, where the colour is extremely variable, with sudden changes from orange to a washed out grey and a blotchy appearance.

 

A detail of the boundary wall at City Road Cemetery

 

Moving up to the Grade II Listed crematorium (1905) by C. and C.M. Hadfield and the chapel (1881) by M.E. Hadfield & Son, the same sandstone has been used. Although orange/grey colouration is visible, like in the boundary, the lack of wild variation makes me think that the sandstone is in fact from the Chatsworth Grit. 

 

The crematorium and chapel

 

The main gatehouse (1879), also by M.E. Hadfield & Son, had already been photographed for the British Listed Buildings and, although I had taken photos of the front elevation myself on a couple of previous occasions, I hadn’t recorded its east elevation. 

 

The main gatehouse

 

I next went looking for the Blitz Grave, where 134 victims of the German bombing of Sheffield in December 1940 are buried. It essentially consists of a walled entrance to an octagonal enclosure, with low walls, which is built with rock-face sandstone. 

 

The Blitz Grave

 

On the inner side of the low wall, there is a band of pink granite with the names of the victims, together with an inscribed plaque with a quote from Deuteronomy, which looks like the Sardinian pink variety but other Variscan granites from Spain and Portugal are quite similar. 

 

The inner wall of the Blitz Grave

 

In a couple of places, I noted that the band of light pink granite is interrupted by a much darker red granite, which is typical of the Precambrian granites of Sweden and Finland, but I can’t think of any reason why this might have been done on a generic memorial such as this. 

 

A band of inscribed dark red Scandinavian granite

 

Having finished photographing the listed buildings in the City Road Cemetery, I had a wander around the cemetery to look for Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones, which I shall describe in my next post, and had another look inside the Halls of Remembrance. 

 

Inscribed Carrara marble panels in the Halls of Remembrance

 

Here, there are numerous niches that are designed to accommodate two caskets of cremated remains and the inscribed panels provide examples of white Italian Carrara marble and also of Hopton Wood limestone from near Wirksworth in Derbyshire.

 

A panel of Hopton Wood limestone