 |
| A datestone at No. 42 Knowle Lane |
Carrying on from my walk from Banner Cross to Ecclesall, where I had a good look at the sandstones used in the Listed Buildings and various boundary walls, I took a short cut to Ecclesall Road South through All Saints churchyard.
 |
| An ornate white marble table tomb |
A large elaborately carved table tomb made of white marble, probably from Carrara in the Apuan Alps of Italy, immediately caught my eye. Getting close up, the marble can be seen to be deeply weathered and in places the loss of its surface is such that calcite veins stand out proud.
 |
| The tomb of Henry Clifton Sorby |
I had briefly visited the churchyard back in September 2018, to find the tomb of Henry Clifton Sorby – the pioneer of using a microscope to study rocks – and went to have another look at the pink Peterhead and grey Cornish granites that have been used to build it.
 |
| The headstone of Lieutenant J.A. Sorby |
Not far from this, I came across the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone of Lieutenant J.A. Sorby of the Australian Field Artillery, but I don’t know if the two are closely related. The headstone is a replacement of the Portand stone original and is made with Glenaby granite, from Lanhélin in Brittany, with the regimental crest and inscription cut with a CNC milling machine – a technique that has superseded carving by hand.
 |
| The Australian Field Artillery regimental crest |
I stopped very briefly to look at the north transept of All Saints church, which was added along with a matching transept to the south and a large chancel by Temple Moore (1906-1908), a London based architect who was responsible for many Gothic Revival churches and restorations during the late C19 and early C20.
 |
| The north transept of All Saints church |
The original church (1789) was remodelled in 1843, including the raising of the tower to its current height, but except to note the use of gritstone that I thought was probably Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley, I didn’t pay much attention to the sandstone in the rest of the church.
 |
| Sandstone used for the north transept of All Saints church |
Having since spent 21 months photographing the historic architecture and building stones of Sheffield, visiting old quarries and natural rock exposures wherever possible, I suspect that this could be quarried from the Rough Rock; however, unlike the other principal sandstone formations on the west side of Sheffield – the Chatsworth Grit, Crawshaw Sandstone, Loxley Edge Rock, Greenmoor Rock and Grenoside Sandstone – I have not yet seen any documentation that identifies the Rough Rock as having been used in any particular building.
 |
| A sandstone house and boundary wall on Knowle Lane |
Continuing my walk along Ecclesall Road South, I turned up Knowle Lane, where the area from here to Ringinglow Road was developed from approximately 1926 to 1935 with almost exclusively brick built semi-detached and detached houses. The boundary walls are built in a sandstone that is quite coarse grained and has sharp grey to orange colour variation – a physical characteristic that I had seen in both the Chatsworth Grit and Loxley Edge Rock.
 |
| Boundary walls on Knowle Lane |
The area around Bents and Green and Greystones is actually underlain by the Loxley Edge Rock which, according to the Sheffield Area Geology Trust is finer-grained, less massive and more flaggy and was only worked for local building stone and is a common feature of garden walls.
 |
| Active and disused quarries marked on the 1924 Ordnance Survey map |
The 1934 Ordnance Survey map (revised 1920) shows that all but one of the Greystones Cliff quarries have closed, the Bents Green quarry is also closed, but that a quarry on an unnamed Pennines Lower Coal Measures Formation sandstone at Silverdale Road in Ecclesall is still operating; however, to determine the source of the sandstones used for the interwar phase of house building, documentary evidence is required.
Two pairs of stone built semi-detached houses at Nos. 42-48, dating to 1926, are built in a style that is more like an Edwardian villa style and is quite different to that seen in the later 1930’s housing developments found in the suburbs of Sheffield.
 |
| Nos. 42 and 44 Knowle Lane |
Knowle Lane follows the line of the southernmost extent of a small plateau of the Loxley Edge Rock and, when turning down to Haugh Lane, the escarpment that it forms is here quite noticeable in a suburban landscape where there are no open green spaces.
 |
| Views of No. 25 Haugh Lane |
Making my way down Haugh Lane past more large white painted 1930’s houses, I came to the Grade II Listed No. 25 Haugh Lane, a house and attached former coach house that is dated by Historic England to the early C18.
 |
| Views of No. 31 Haugh Lane |
Looking from the pavement, I could see that walling and the quoins are made from the same sandstone, which varies from grey to dark rusty brown in colour and reminds me of much of the stonework that I had previously seen when investigating the geology and historic architecture around Fulwood – and the same pattern was seen at No 31 Haugh Lane.
 |
| Bents Green House |
Reaching the junction with Bents Road, I photographed the Grade II Listed Bents Green House (1828), without taking a close look at the greyish looking stonework, before heading up Bents Road to have a quick look at the unlisted Bents Green Methodist Church.
 |
| Bents Green Methodist Church |
This was designed by the architect W.J. Hale, whose work I had seen at the Wesley Hall, St. Luke’s church and the Congregational Church in Crookes, Sheffield Board Schools at Bole Hill, Lydgate Lane and Hammerton Street and Rawmarsh Methodist Church, but he died before it was finished and the church was completed in 1931 by G.R. Bower.
 |
| A detail of the coarse sandstone at Bents Green Methodist Church |
The walling of the church and the lower course of the railings is built with a coarse grained sandstone with a grey/orange colour variation and occasional pebbles, which is probably Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley. The coping stones and capping stones to the piers on the boundary wall are artificial stone, with an aggregate of large angular fragments of sandstone.
 |
| An artificial stone capping to a gate pier |
No comments:
Post a Comment