A Walk From Grenoside to Jawbone Hill

 

A fingerpost in Grenoside

My next day out in March 2022, following my further investigation of Crookes, Walkley and Hillsborough, was to explore the escarpment of Greenmoor Rock than runs from Jawbone Hill along Birley Edge to Wadsley Bridge and then on to Wardsend Cemetery.

 

A map showing the outcrop of the Greenmoor Rock

Taking the No. 86 bus from Sheffield city centre to the Penistone Road/Norfolk Hill stop, I paused briefly to look at the uniformly coloured sandstone that has been used for the Norfolk Arms public house, which I assume is the locally quarried Grenoside Sandstone. 

 

The Norfolk Arms public house

As usual, I had compiled a short list of buildings that did not yet have a photo on the British Listed Buildings website, which included Grenoside war memorial (1922). The wheel head cross is made with roughly hewn Cornish grey granite, with a three stepped plinth made of Grenoside Sandstone. 

 

Grenoside war memorial

Making my way up Norfolk Hill, which I had partly explored during a previous visit to Grenoside, I was interested to see that the Grenoside Sandstone at the base of various walls along the roadside is quite weathered – probably due to the use of road salt along this steep hill in winter – and distinctly yellow in colour. 

Weathered Grenoside Sandstone on Norfolk Hill

Turning down School Lane, I then had a good look at the exterior of the early C19 old School and adjoining Master’s house, now Grenoside Reading Room, where the yellow colour is still very obvious beneath the layer of dirt. 

 

The old School

I didn’t spend any time studying the stonework, but it is very uniform in colour, cross-bedded and with no obvious wild iron banding. I didn’t really take much notice of the very blackened dressings, which could be more massive varieties of the Grenoside sandstone used for the walling. 

 

Greoside Sandstone at the old School House

Continuing up Norfolk Hill, I couldn’t resist having a good look at the former Grenoside Board School, built in 1885 to the design of George Archibald Wilson of the practice Wilson and Masters, who were responsible of a total of 7 schools for the Ecclesfield School Board – of which only the Hillsborough and Low Wincobank schools remain. 

 

The former Grenoside Board School

Having surveyed all of the board schools that are listed in the Victorian Society book: Building Schools for Sheffield, I know that they are all very solidly built and it is a great shame that such a fine building like this is slowly decaying and not being put to good use. 

 

Greno Cottage

Noting the rather elaborate door surround at Greno Cottage, I retraced my steps and carried on up the hill until I reached Grenoside Green, where there is the file cutter's stithy, which I couldn’t recall seeing before, and various sculptural works by Andrew Vickers. 

 

The fille cutter's stithy

Coming out of Grenoside Green onto Main Street, I took a couple of photos of Nos. 139-141, just to record another example of uniformly yellow coloured, medium grained cross-bedded sandstone, before heading up Stephen Lane. 

 

Nos. 139-141 Main Street

 

Very surprisingly, given its industrial history and age of some of the buildings, troughs and other miscellaneous structures, there are only three listed buildings in Grenoside but the Grenoside Sandstone gives the vernacular architecture within the Grenoside Conservation Area a very distinctive character. 

 

The 1855 Ordnance Survey map of Grenoside

 

The 1855 Ordnance Survey map shows three reasonably sized quarries working in the area, which have presumably supplied the Grenoside Sandstone for the old core of the village, with these having being expanded with cranes by the time the 1906 map was published; however, although the LIDAR map suggests the possibility of small sections of old quarry faces still existing in back gardens, I have only seen one old quarry exposure in Grenoside. 

 

Vernacular architecture on Stephen Lane

I continued my walk along Stephen Lane, which gently rises up the dip slope of the Grenoside Sandstone, where there are yet more yellow sandstone houses, where the masonry is in a variable condition and, in places, differential weathering has been repaired with sand and cement. 

 

Sand and cement repairs

Eventually, Stephen Lane continues to rise until it reaches a gentle escarpment of the Grenoside Sandstone, with a series of transmitters set on its edge and overlooking the River Don, but there are no rock outcrops to be seen. 

 

An escarpment of Grenoside Sandstone

 

Leaving Grenoside, the character of the surroundings completely changes, with the uniformly yellow coloured Grenoside Sandstone, seen ubiquitously in the vernacular architecture, suddenly changing to dark rusty brown, thinly bedded Greenmoor Rock in the field boundary walls.

 

A field boundary wall built of Greenmoor Rock