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| 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).
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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