Listed Buildings in the Loxley Valley

 

Sandstones at the Robin Hood public house

My brief exploration of the Stannington Ruffs geological SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) ended by walking up the path through Acorn Hill to see the Robin Hood Inn (1804), the first of six buildings in the Loxley valley that I wanted to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website. 

 

The Robin Hood Inn

It is built with an iron stained sandstone, which contains a high proportion of orange coloured blocks that I didn’t see when previously exploring the old centre of Stannington, where I had assumed that the sandstone used here came from a quarry on the escarpment of Crawshaw Sandstone to the west of the village. I didn’t examine it closely, but from my photos I can see that it is much finer grained than the dressings, which is very probably Chatsworth Grit.

 

The east elevation of the Robin Hood Inn

Looking at the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, there was a quarry less than 250 metres away ESE of the inn, which worked the Loxley Edge Rock, with others nearly 1 km away to the south-west, which were located on the Middle Band Rock – a sandstone formation that I am not familiar with. 

 

A Latin inscription at the Robin Hood Inn

On the rear of the building, I photographed a Latin inscription that is cut in a sandstone that, along with a band course in similar stone, is more massive and coarser grained than the basic walling stone, but does not contain small pebbles as seen in the lintel and sill below and above them. 

 

Olive Cottages

I then followed the path down to the River Loxley, where several mills once operated – as along the River Rivelin, the River Sheaf and the Porter Brook - and took a few quick snaps of Olive Cottages and Olive House, a sandstone built house that has been rendered. 

 

Olive House

Continuing through Wisewood Cemetery to find the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones, which I will briefly describe in my next post, the next building on my list to photograph was the Early C19 Grade II Listed cowhouse on Loxley Road.

 

The cowhouse on Loxley Road

 

Next on my list was the dilapidated Grade II* Listed Loxley United Reformed Church (1787), where I met various members of the Friends of Loxley Cemetery. Again, I didn’t look at the stone closely but it is not dissimilar to the sandstone seen at the Robin Hood Inn. A couple of small quarries on the Crawshaw Sandstone are marked on the 1855 map within 1 km of the chapel, with others in the Loxley Edge Rock a little further away, including those at Wadsley Common but, without documentary evidence, this highlights how difficult it is to identify the sandstones around Sheffield.

 

The Loxley United Reformed Church

The very fine grained sandstone used for the various headstones is very distinctive and is most likely the variety of Greenmoor Rock known locally in Sheffield as the Brincliffe Edge Rock, which developed a very good reputation for its memorial grade stone. A few years previously, I had been very impressed by the size of the grave slabs and the very fine letter cutting at the Hill Top Chapel in Attercliffe, but one particular grave that I should have measured is the largest slab of this sandstone that I have seen.

 

An extremely large grave slab

Returning to Loxley Road, I was surprised to find a hooded outlet to a spring on a boundary wall that links to a series of troughs, which I thought was very unusual and is locally listed. Although I was very tempted by the Loxley Beer Festival, which I had discovered was taking place at the nearby Wisewood Inn, I decided that it would be better to catch a bus to Hillsborough and make my way back home to Treeton.

 

A spring feeding various troughs