Geology & Architecture in Burngreave

 

Samples of Parkgate Rock from Kilton Hill (21 mm diameter coin)

My last day out in May 2023, with the principal aim to photograph the Commonwealth War Grave Commission headstones in Burngreave Cemetery, had taken 2½ hours and, before leaving by the Melrose Road entrance, I stopped briefly to take a photo of the twin chapels (1861) that were designed by Flockton and Lee.

 

The twin chapels at Burngreave Cemetery

 

Continuing along Melrose Road until I reached the Roman Catholic Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria (1925), where I wanted to see if I could get access to an old quarry face that I had noticed when last passing this church. 

 

Melrose Road on the 1892 Ordnance Survey map

 

On the 1855 edition of the Ordnance Survey map, the area formed part of Burngreave Wood and a quarry wasn't shown here but, on the 1892 edition, it was marked as an old quarry. The nearby Victorian houses of this period are built with brick and not stone, except for the boundary walls, and the quarry could therefore have been opened to supply stone for these. 

 

The old quarry behind the Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria

I couldn’t get access to the quarry face, which is now mostly covered by a retaining wall but I did manage to get just a glimpse of it through the gate and, when returning home, I looked at the geology map and discovered that this is the Silkstone Rock - a formation that I had seen in the cuttings at Sheffield Midland railway station and at Wincobank Hill. 

 

The geology around Burngreave

 

During previous visits to this part of Sheffield, which had been part of a longer walk, I had photographed Christ Church and the Pye Bank School as part of the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, but had not yet seen the Seventh Day Adventist Church and set off up Rock Street, where the houses on its west side were built between 1850 and 1892. 

 

Walling and a gatepost on Rock Street

 

The garden walls and gateposts, which in places are quite substantial, are built with a sandstone that is very rich in iron, with well developed Liesegang rings and concentrations of ironstone – a characteristic of the Silkstone Rock, Parkgate Rock and associated minor sandstones. 

 

The Seventh Day Adventist Church on Andover Street

 

Continuing to Nottingham Street and Andover Street, I stopped to take a few general record photos of the Seventh Day Adventist Church (1865) by William Hill of Leeds. From these, I can see that the sandstone does not have a very high iron contact and has plane bedding, which is one of the distinctive characteristics of the Crawshaw Sandstone from Bole Hills. 

 

The south transept

 

These quarries supplied the sandstone that was used to build the vast majority of the Sheffield Board Schools and various Victorian churches and, according to Hunts Mineral Statistics, were by a long way the largest supplier of sandstone in Sheffield. 

 

The boundary wall and a gatepost

I didn’t stop to examine them closely, but the gateposts are made of a coarse grained massive sandstone that is probably from the Chatsworth Grit in the Rivelin Valley, but the upper part of the boundary wall is actually artificial stone, which has a very coarse aggregate. 

 

Weathered sandstone in a boundary wall on Kilton Hill

 

Making my way down Andover Street and looking down Kilton Hill, I noticed the high boundary wall next to the electricity sub-station and, going to investigate, could see that the coursed rubble siltstone is very soft and that most of the blocks have been very rounded by weathering. 

 

An outcrop of Parkgate Rock on Kilton Hill

 

On the opposite side of the road, behind the shrubs and thick undergrowth, I was interested to see small outcrops of quite flaggy sandstone in the upper part of the overgrown bank. Although I didn’t come out with my Estwing hammer, I was determined to obtain a specimen and scrambled up the bank to collect a loose piece to add to my rock collection. 

 

Flaggy sandstone in the Parkgate Rock

The 1855 Ordnance Survey map shows a couple of quarries in the Parkgate Rock on Burngreave Road but, when the 1892 edition was published, it shows that this exposure is part of the cutting that was formed when Kilton Hill was laid out in this rapidly growing suburb. 

 

Quarries shown on Ordnance Survey maps

 

A little further down the hill, I then encountered part of the southern face of the western quarry and, having asked permission from the proprietor of the adjoining mechanic business, took a few photos of the quarry face and obtained another specimen of Parkgate Rock. 

 

Views of the old quarry on Kilton Hill

 

The quarry is occupied by several automotive businesses and a former petrol station that is now used as a hand car wash and there are no obvious signs of any other quarry faces; however, this small section shows that the strata dips to the south-east and follows the strike of the Don Monocline, which the British Geological Survey map marks as being 12 degrees here. 

 

A medium grained specimen of Parkgate Rock

 

Of the two samples that I collected, the one that I collected from the Kilton Hill cutting is distinctly grey, medium grained and well bedded, which is very different to the fine to very fine grained sandstone, with the development of iron banding and small flattened clay ironstone pellets, which I collected from a lower level in the old quarry face.

 

Fine grained Parkgate Rock with clay ironstone pellets