Loxley Edge and Wadsley Common

 

Specimens of ganister (top) and Loxley Edge Rock (bottom)

My brief investigation of Sheffield’s east end, where I had a good look at various bridges and walls, the Wicker Arches and Victoria Quays, unexpectedly provided me with enough subject material to write 5 posts for this Language of Stone Blog. 

 

Loxley and Wadsley Commons in 1906

For my next trip, having learned a bit more about the railway and canal infrastructure that enabled the rapid growth of the steel and engineering industries in Sheffield, I took another quick look at Wadsley Common – where the Loxley Edge Rock was exploited for building stone and the underlying Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation strata for its ganister. 

 

The Loxley Edge Rock

On this occasion, I went with my friend Linda from the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, who I had accompanied on her investigations of the Neolithic rock art and old ganister quarries in Ecclesall Woods, on a couple of occasions during the winter. 

 

A view along Loxley Edge

On my my first visit to this part of rural Sheffield a few months previously, I briefly looked at the escarpment formed by the Loxley Edge Rock and the large blocks of sandstone that are sliding down to the valley bottom, before having a quick look at the lower slopes, without seeing much evidence of the ganister mining.

 

Loxley Edge

I had previously arranged to meet Jan, a resident at the east end of Wadsley Common, who had been very interested in the various maps of Loxley and Wadsley Commons - including the BGS geological map and a LIDAR map – which I had posted on Facebook after my first visit to Loxley Edge in December 2021.

 

A view towards Keppel's column

 

The land she owns includes the site of an old ganister works, with an old shaft, and she had to agreed to take us for a short walk around Wadsley Common, from which there are some stunning views of Sheffield and the surrounding area – including Keppel’s Column in Rotherham, which was shrouded in scaffold at the time. 

 

The old Wadsley quarries

Hunt’s Mineral Statistics (1858) lists a quarry at Wadsley as producing stones for kerbs and for pitching, a technique where the squared stones are laid on edge for use in roads and pavements, which provides a smoother surface than cobbles, but the quarries have long since been disused and the piles or rock waste are covered in heather. 

 

A LIDAR map of the Wadsley quarries

LIDAR maps suggest that that there may be some old quarry faces on the south part of the site, but this area is off the public footpath and covered in trees and we did not go to try and find them. Instead, Jan and her husband showed us the ‘sword in the stone’, a large block of sandstone into which a broad sword is carved in relief, but about which very little is known. 

 

The 'sword in the stone'

Although I did not encounter any natural rock faces, all around the paths and waste tips, various specimens of rock were lying about and, using my Estwing hammer, I obtained a few specimens to add to my growing rock collection. 

 

A specimen of Loxley Edge Rock

The sample of very coarse grained Loxley Edge Rock, with its very blackened weathered surface, is very similar to the specimens that I had obtained from Loxley Edge a few months earlier and is very different to the ganister, which is extremely fine grained and siliceous with a characteristic splintery fracture. 

 

A specimen of ganister

 

Victoria Quays in Sheffield

 

A detail of a skew arch

Continuing my exploration of the historic buildings around the old industrial area of Sheffield’s east end, between the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal and the River Don, after taking photographs of the excellent stone carvings at the S.A.D.A.C.C.A. Social Centre, I made my way to the end of The Wicker and continued down Blonk Street. 

 

Sculptures by Dan Bustamante

 

I stopped very briefly at the Stonehome Apartments, where the empty ground floor unit contains a late C19 crucible stack and is currently used for the storage of the sculptures by Dan Bustamante, who has been building and rebuilding sculptures along the bed of the River Don here since 2016. 

 

A plaque commemorating Benjamin Blonk

 

Noting a plaque erected by Sheffield City Council, relating to their current improvements to the area around Castlegate, I learned a little bit more about Sheffield’s industrial history and Benjamin Blonk - a scissor maker, cutler and pioneer of steam, who was a tenant of the Castle Orchards Wheel from the 1750s to the 1770s. 

 

A tunnel forming an entrance to Victoria Quays

Continuing along Blonk Street over the River Don, I crossed over Furnival Road to a tunnel, which forms the entrance to the Sheffield Canal Basin, now named Victoria Quays, which I had visited several times over the years. 

 

The 1894 Ordnance Survey map showing the canal basin

 

Looking at the 1855 and 1894 Ordnance Survey maps, which I had made good use of when trying to make sense of the various railway bridges, it is not easy to imagine what this part of Sheffield looked like at the height of its industrial growth. 

 

The site of the former railway coal yard on Google Street View

This tunnel forms part of a viaduct like structure that originally had 22 arches, which the Historic England listing describes as “coal staithes and tunnel below railway coal yard” - built in 1855 for the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MSLR) adding further that the “coal was dropped from wagons into the vaults beneath the arches”. 

 

A detail of the vaulting to a skew arch

 

The canal basin itself was constructed from 1816 to 1819 as the terminus of the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal, which was acquired by the MSLR in 1848 as part of its expansion but, on this occasion, I was more interested in the sandstone used for the skew arch in the tunnel. 

The vaulting in a skew arch

My archivist friend Sally had suggested that some of the stone used for the Wicker Arches had been brought from the excavations of the railway cutting and tunnel in Darnall. Although I don’t think that the facing stones along the Wicker Arches are from this source, the grey sandstone that has been used for the vaults could quite possibly have come from here. 

 

Walling to the coal staithes

 

The walling on the exterior of the arches is made of a light brown sandstone, which has distinct iron banding and Liesegang rings and is quite similar to the stone seen at the section of Wicker Arches that crosses the River Don. I didn’t stop to further investigate the various listed warehouses and office buildings, which are associated with the Sheffield Canal and carried on north past various vaults, which are mostly occupied by businesses. 

 

A detail of the walling to the coal staithes

On my walk so far, since alighting from the No. 73 bus on City Road and walking down to the Church of. St. John the Evangelist, via the Reggae Kitchen, I had encountered a wide variety of Upper Carboniferous sandstones – the Chatsworth Grit, the Parkgate Rock, the Silkstone Rock and others that I didn’t recognize in the Wicker Arches. 

 

Vaults forming part of the Quays Hotel

It is quite likely that the same sandstone has been used to build both the Wicker Arches and the coal staithes, but I didn’t stop to closely examine it and carried on walking along the canal side until I came to the Heron and Fish (1995) by Vega Bermejo. 

 

Heron and Fish by Vega Berjemo

On a Saturday afternoon, Victoria Quays gets quite busy, especially during the monthly food market and, with my views of the structure largely obscured, I didn’t take any further photos of the various vaults and other features.

 

The east side of the north tunnel

 

At the north end of the arches, there is another tunnel that leads to New Quay Drive, but I didn't stop to look at any of the details of the stonework and headed off towards the former Sheaf Works after photographing both entrances, which have different styles of voussoirs.

 

The west side of the north tunnel

The Grade II Listed Sheaf Works, the first large scale cutlery factory in Sheffield, was built in 1823 in a Classical Revival style for William Graves and Sons. Graves had financed the works from his previous trade with America - including razors, table cutlery and sturdy bowie knives – and the ease of transporting raw goods and finished items of cutlery along the canal enabled him to substantially increase production. 

 

The Sheaf Works

I just took a couple of photos of the main elevation and a detail of Liesegang rings, without studying the sandstone masonry in any detail, but from these I can see large areas of masonry beneath the pediment and at a high level, which appear to have been repaired in sand and cement.

 

Liesegang rings at the Sheaf Works

 

The S.A.D.A.C.C.A. Social Centre

 

A datestone corbel

As a geologist, with specialist interests in historic architecture and the building stones used in their construction, I didn’t expect to find much of interest to write about in this Language of Stone Blog, when I set out to photograph a few listed Victorian brick built buildings in the industrial area to the east of Sheffield city centre – a stable and a sick bay for horses, a canalside warehouse, a crucible steel works and a sawmill on the River Don.

The area around the canal basin on the 1855 Ordnance Survey map

 

However, having seen various bridges and walls, I acquired a better understanding of what I assume to be sandstone from the Parkgate Rock and perhaps the Silkstone Rock and have learned a bit more about Sheffield’s railway history – especially when looking at old Ordnance Survey maps of the east end of Sheffield. 

 

The area around the canal basin on the 1894 Ordnance Survey map

At the Wicker Arches, I encountered another Upper Carboniferous sandstone that I could not readily identify, along with what I still believe to be Chatsworth Grit in Wicker Arch itself and after taking a quick snap of the old National Westminster Bank, I headed up The Wicker to the S.A.D.A.C.C.A. Community Centre and Social Club building – a thriving hub for the Afro-Caribbean community in Sheffield. 

 

A detail of the former National Westminster Bank

The Classical style house was originally built in 1853 for John Shortridge, a contractor for the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, who completed 12 km of the track through Longdendale and later built the Wicker Arches, after moving to Sheffield and forming Miller Blackie and Shortridge – and then went on to form the steel and file making firm of Shortridge, Howell and Co. with its offices at No. 48 The Wicker. 

 

A general view

 

The Historic England listing doesn’t even mention its fine architectural sculpture, which had caught my attention when seeing it very many times from the top deck of the X78 bus. In my experience, this is quite typical of their descriptions, which tend to be very austere and pay very little attention to the interesting details. 

 

A keystone with a hammer and a cog

In Sheffield, the work of Frank Tory and his twin sons, Alfred and William, is very well known in architectural and local history circles, but they are very rarely mentioned. In my travels around the city, I have encountered numerous excellent examples of headstops, grotesques and gargoyles at various Victorian churches and cemetery chapels, as well as on buildings in the city centre, and the sculptors deserve recognition. 

 

The J. Shortridge corbel

At ground floor level, there are four ornately carved corbels, with two carved with fish and the sheaf of arrows from the Sheffield crest and the others bearing a date and the name of J. Shortridge, which have a pair of elephants carved on them.

 

A corbel with fish and a sheaf of arrows

 

Each of the ground floor arches has an ornamented keystone, with a hammer with a cog in the centre, with two bearded heads flanking it. Looking closely at the latter, they both have strange ram’s horn like detailing around the top of the head, which seems quite unusual. 

 

Keystones on the ground floor arches

 

On the rusticated first floor, there are further ornamented keystones to the 3 round-arched recesses with voussoirs, which each containing a Venetian window. The sculpted heads to the keystones remind me of the various heads of sea gods that I have seen in many places. I have to say that I was too busy taking photos to take much notice of the sandstone used in its construction, which from these looks like it could be a medium grained gritstone from Derbyshire. 

 

Ornamented keystones on the first floor

A plaque commemorates Samuel Osborn (1826-1891), one of the city's greatest industrialists and the Master Cutler in 1873 and the Lord Mayor in 1890. Samuel Osborn and Company Ltd. purchased the Clyde Works from Shortridge, Howell and Co. in 1868. It was here that the production of R.F. Mushet's self-hardening steel was perfected, which became a Sheffield speciality and made the name Samuel Osborn synonymous with the highest quality tool steel.

 

A plaque commemorating Samuel Osborn

 

The Wicker Arches in Sheffield

 

Wicker Arch

At the end of Sussex Street, having looked at the various bridges and walls relating to the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal and the railways in the industrial east end of Sheffield, I got my first glimpse of the Wicker Arches - a 600 m long railway viaduct across the Don Valley, which was built in 1848 to extend the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MSLR). 

 

The Wicker Arches at Sussex Street

 

The engineer was Sir John Fowler, who designed the Forth Bridge, with the detailed architectural work on the central Wicker Arch and adjoining buildings delegated to Weightman, Hadfield and Goldie – an established practice that were responsible for some of the finest buildings in Sheffield. 

 

The interior of an arch

 

The massive sandstone used here is very blackened, sometimes obscured by moss and algae and, particularly in the interior of the arches, covered in lime that has washed down from the Staffordshire blue brickwork that forms their roofs. 

 

The Wicker Arches at the crossing of the River Don

Continuing to the end of Sussex Street, where the viaduct crosses the River Don, the stonework is relatively clean and reveals buff/yellow sandstone with moderate iron staining, which lacks the distinct grey colour that could be seen along Bernard Road earlier on my walk. 

 

A view along the Wicker Arches on Sussex Street

Although I had passed under Wicker Arch a few times, I had not looked at the other parts of the viaduct before but, a year or so earlier, an archivist colleague had contacted me to inform me that she had a found a reference, which suggested that rock excavated from the (MSLR) railway cutting and tunnel at Darnall may have been used to build parts of the viaduct. 

 

The Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation around Darnall.

Looking at the geological map, the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation strata around Darnall, through which the railway line runs, are dominated by alternating thin sandstones and mudstones, which in my experience don’t produce the best building stone. 

 

The crossing of the River Don

 

Crossing the river via the Cobweb Bridge, which was built as part of the Five Weirs Walk, I then had a good look at the south elevation of the viaduct, where the same iron stained sandstone is seen in the rock-faced walling. 

 

A detail of the voussoirs at the River Don crossing

Zooming in to the very large voussoirs, it looks like the cross-bedded sandstone used for these is the same as that seen in the walling, which suggests that they have been made from the more massive sandstone beds in an established quarry face - probably discounting the idea that the stone has been brought from the railway excavations at Darnall. 

 

Views of the south elevation of Wicker Arch

The Sheffield Area Geology Trust website refers to the possibility of Wharncliff Rock being used for the central Wicker Arch, based on a reference in the Pevsner guide for Sheffield, but the evidence of suitable quarries around Wharncliffe Crags is far from conclusive. 

 

The western part of the Wicker Arches

After taking a few general record photographs of Wicker Arch and the part of the viaduct that continues on the west side of the Wicker, I went to take a much closer look at the gritty sandstone used for this magnificent structure. 

 

A view of the coarse grained gritstone at Wicker Arch

 

When I first saw the Wicker Arch, several years previously, I hadn’t then started to investigate the building stones of Sheffield in any depth but, having undertaken surveys of geological sites where I had seen the very coarse grained and often pebbly Chatsworth Grit, I have always thought that it has been used here. 

 

A detail of the coarse gritstone at Wicker Arch

My only experience of the Wharncliff Rock was on a field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group to Wharncliffe Crags in 2019, but I didn’t collect any samples or have any time to closely examine this sandstone at my leisure – which is a good reason to visit them again. 

 

An ornate panel with a relief carving of the Sheffield crest

I finished my very brief exploration of the Wicker Arches by taking a couple of photographs of the two relief panels carved with crests, which are set above the pedestrian arches, before continuing along the Wicker to the Grade II Listed SADACCA Social Centre. 

 

A relief panel with a royal crest