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| Catherine and Sally inspecting the headstones |
Following on from my very brief visit to Sheffield on a sunny November afternoon, when I had a quick look at St. George’s church and various historic buildings during a walk back to the city centre, I had expected my next day out to be a field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group to Whirlow and Ecclesall Woods – for which a recce had been undertaken earlier in the month.
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| A view of the conference room in the Natural History Museum |
A change in plans led to this being postponed and replaced by a morning visit to the Yorkshire Natural History Museum in Malin Bridge, with a brief exploration of the geology and industrial archaeology along the Rivelin Valley arranged for the afternoon.
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| A view of the gallery space in the Natural History Museum |
On the day, the rain was so heavy that the afternoon walk had to be cancelled and our ‘field trip’ consisted of a look at the main gallery, a talk on 3D scanning and a tour of the fossil preparation lab, which really didn't add much to the experience that I already had from its opening day.
I had to wait another week before I had my next day out – this time to Bolsterstone, a small village set above the Ewden Valley that is no longer served by buses. The occasion was to help Catherine, a friend from the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, with the identification of the stone that has been used for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC headstones in St. Mary’s churchyard – as part of the Bolsterstone Graveyard Project.
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| Inspecting the headstones |
Having been collected by Catherine at the Middlewood Park and Ride, we met up with Sally – a volunteer with the CWGC – and despite the rain, immediately set off to look around the large churchyard, which served surrounding hamlets that did not have their own church.
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| The headstone of private P. Woodhead |
The first CWGC headstone that we encountered was of Private P. Woodhead of the Canadian Infantry, a regiment that I had not encountered before. The stone used is Italian Botticino marble, a Jurassic micritic limestone from Brescia, which is now used for replacement headstones. - with the regimental crest and the inscription now being cut with a CNC milling machine instead of by hand.
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| A detail of the headstone of Private P. Woodhead |
The next headstone commemorates Marine David John Marsh of the Royal Marines, who died in 2008, which has a similar design to the CWGC headstones but has cut shoulders. Sally informed us that the CWGC only provided headstones to those who died within the core periods of WWI and WWII and that the Ministry of Defence provides for the casualties of wars outside these dates.
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| The headstone of Marine David John Marsh |
When first seeing this particular headstone from a distance, its very pale colour immediately made me think that this was Portland stone. Getting closer to take a couple of photos, the slight cream colour – which somehow seemed odd to me - did make me wonder if it is actually made of Portland stone and I will need to take another look at it.
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| The headstone of Marine David John Marsh |
I have a seen a lot of Portland stone over the years, when working in London as a building restoration contractor - and when photographing various civic and university buildings in Sheffield, Barnsley, Leeds and Nottingham and very many examples of post war architectural sculpture.
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| The headstone of Private G. Haigh |
Looking at the headstones of Private G. Haigh of the Royal Fusiliers, another regiment that I hadn’t encountered, and Aircraftman A. Hodgkinson of the Royal Air Force, who died in 1919 and 1947 respectively, I immediately recognised these as being made of Portland stone.
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| The headstone of Aircraftman A. Hodgkinson |
Once you get your eye in, the subtleties in the colours and particularly the textures become apparent and, having seen further examples of Botticino marble in the headstones of Private A. Greaves of the Labour Corps and Wren D.E. Musk of the Women's Royal Naval Service, both Catherine and Sally soon learned how to distinguish this from Portland stone.
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| The headstones of Private A. Greaves and Wren D.E. Musk |
The headstones of Privates F. Marsh and J. Green, both of the Yorks and Lancaster Regiment, are made in the renowned Stancliffe Darley Dale stone - quarried from the Ashover Grit in the Derwent Valley to the north of Matlock. Despite the patina and algae, the light brown colour can still be seen and, without the benefit of an inspection with a hand lens or an acid test, it is easily distinguished from a limestone.
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| The headstones of Privates F. Marsh and J.Green |
Apart from its distinctive colour, it is the abundance of shell fragments that give Portland stone its readily identifiable texture, especially when weathered and standing proud by sometimes as much as 4mm – as seen in the piers to the railings surrounding Barnsley Town Hall, which could easily be used as the starting point of a geological field trip.
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| The headstone of Sapper A.F. Stokes |
The last headstone that I was shown was that of Sapper A.F. Stokes of the Royal Engineers, where Sally pointed out what she thought was damage to the headstone. It turned out to be a large and quite crystalline fossil cast of an oyster shell, from which part of the surrounding mould has been weathered away.
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| A fossil oyster shell |
On the day, the weather and the very wet condition of the ground restricted us to a quick look at most of the CWGC headstones and I only took a few snaps of the churchyard as a whole, before having a walk around the exterior of St. Mary’s church.
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| Views of the churchyard |
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