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