Sandstone at the Kilner Way Retail Park

 

Greenmoor Rock at the Kilner Way Retail Park

During my brief investigation of Birley Carr and Wadsley Bridge, I went to have a quick look at an old quarry in the Greenmoor Rock that I first noticed nearly 40 years ago, when travelling on the bus between Sheffield and High Green, where I lived at the time. 

 

The outcrop of the Greenmoor Rock in and around Wadsley Bridge

From the Halifax Road, all I could see were the thick beds of sandstone, which I had presumed were used for building stone, but I was working as a trainee general practice surveyor for the District Valuer/Valuation Office and I didn’t take much interest in Sheffield’s geology at the time. 

 

Wadsley Bridge Brickworks on the 1906 Ordnance Survey map

 

The Greenmoor Rock, which is best known for its high quality paving at Green Moor and for high quality headstones and monuments at Brincliffe Edge, is actually extremely variable and in places this formation contains a high proportion of mudstone and shale, which has been exploited along with the underlying strata for making bricks. 

 

Greenmoor Rock at the Kilner Way Retail Park

 

The brickworks at Wadsley Bridge was opened uphill of the railway bridge, between the publication of the 1894 and 1906 editions of the Ordnance Survey maps, but vegetation and the development of the Kilner Way Retail Park has obscured the views from the Halifax Road and I had to walk to the far end of it to see the rock exposures. 

 

Greenmoor Rock at the Kilner Way Retail Park

Compared to the former Woodside Brickworks on Chesterfield Road, there is a considerably greater thickness of sandstone in this section of the Greenmoor Rock, which was probably exploited for building or paving stone, but the quarry face is fenced off and I could only take photos using the zoom lens on my Canon Powershot G7X Mark II camera.

 

A detail of the Greenmoor Rock

 

Having photographed the exposures of Geenmoor Rock, I headed back towards Halifax Road and was interested in the sandstone that has been used for the paving at the retail park. Its uniform yellow colour reminded me of the Grenoside Sandstone that I had seen earlier on my walk, but I am not aware of any instances of this rock formation being used in this way.

 

 Sandstone paving at the Kilner Way Retail Park

The retail park was redeveloped in 2010, but in very many places the stone has shown marked deterioration and in places forms a severe trip hazard, with delamination of very thin beds of sandstone from the surface revealing ripple marks. 

 

Ripple marks exposed by delamination of the sandstone paving

Although the high quality paving from the local Greenmoor Rock has long been unavailable, it is still produced near Shepley and high quality Coal Measures sandstone is still widely available from West Yorkshire and Lancashire, as well as the Rough Rock from Huddersfield, which has been widely used as paving for the Heart of the City developments in Sheffield. 

 

Advanced weathering of the paving

Using my fingers, I obtained a sample of thinly laminated light muddy brown coloured stone that had become detached, which is very fine grained and, when viewed with a hand lens, has tiny flakes of white mica scattered on the bedding plane.

 

A sample of sandstone paving at the Kilner Way Retail Park