Endcliffe Park and Ecclesall Road

 

Outcrops of Greenmoor Rock in Endcliffe Park

When undertaking a recce for the April 2024 Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip, much of the planning for the day had already been done when preparing for the curtailed November 2023 meeting at Sheffield General Cemetery and while exploring Nether Edge and Ecclesall Road as part of various British Listed Buildings Photo Challenges in the Nether Edge and Sharrow and Broomhill and Sharrow Vale wards. 

 

The boundary wall on Botanical Road

 

Having visited Sheffield Botanical Gardens to identify several points of interest for the group, my next step was to decide on the route to Endcliffe Park, which I thought would be a good place to have our lunch and, after, leaving by the west entrance on Brocco Bank, its boundary wall on Botanical Road caught my eye. 

 

The geology around Brocco Bank

The Building Stones Database for England map explorer marks the road as following an outcrop of Grenoside Sandstone, but the wall is clearly built mainly of typically thin bedded Greenmoor Rock; however, judging by the very irregular nature of its lower part as seen from a distance, it looked liked the wall was built on an outcrop of sandstone. 

 

A detail of the boundary wall on Botanical Road

 

Getting much closer, I couldn’t determine any obvious continuous natural rock outcrop, but there are several large blocks of quite massive sandstone that seem to be incorporated in the foundations of a wall built with flaggy sandstone.

 

A boundary wall built with very thinly bedded flaggy sandstone

 

Continuing down the hill, the Greenmoor Rock in the boundary walls to the houses exhibit  that show various bed thicknesses and lithologies, which can be used to demonstrate the various flow regimes relating to the environment in which the Greenmoor Rock was deposited.

 

The entrance to the old Brocco Bank quarry

 

Approaching No. 23 Botanical Road, I was interested to see that the northern side of the drive to the house at its rear has a high wall, which looks like an old quarry face that has been faced to produce a basic retaining wall. The drive is still partially paved in a manner that I have seen in many approaches to old industrial sites and, later referring to the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, I discovered that this is the entrance to the former Brocco Bank Quarry. 

 

The location of Brocco Bank Quarry on the 1855 Ordnance survey map

 

The list of quarries produced by the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT), which is based on Hunt’s Mineral Statistics (1858), show that this is one of two quarries listed at Brocco Bank. It was owned by Thomas Broomhead and 2000 tons of stone were produced in this year – including flags, steps, heads, sills, gravestones, whitening stone and walling stone. 

 

The entrance to St. Augustine's church

 

By the time the 1894 edition was published, the quarry had become disused and several detached houses had been built in the area along the newly constructed Botanical Road and. The 1906 edition shows that St. Augustine’s church (1897) had been erected on the site, where small exposures of the Greenmoor Rock, which I had first encountered during a walk from Shepherds Wheel to Hunter's Bar, can be seen behind thick undergrowth on the site. 

 

The Porter Brook in Endcliffe Park

 

Before entering Endcliffe Park at Hunter’s Bar, I noted that the Porter Brook was at a much higher level than I had seen before and, keeping to the paths, I continued towards the Mi Amigo memorial to look at the small outcrops of Greenmoor Rock that occur in the hillside to the north of it.

 

The hillside to the north of the Mi Amigo memorial

 

On previous occasions when the ground was much drier, I had scrambled up the moderately steep slope to examine the small outcrops, which are mainly exposed amongst the tree roots, but this time I just took a few photos with the zoom lens on my Panasonic Lumix TZ100 camera.

 

Small outcrops of Greenmoor Rock

 

Having identified suitable places where we could take our lunch on the day of the field trip, I headed up Ecclesall Road. Passing various Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, which are all built with Greenmoor Rock that has a distinct green tinge, the last part of my recce was to check accessibility to the old quarry faces on the site of the former John Gregory brickworks.

 

Terraced houses on Ecclesall Road

 

The old quarry face on Marmion Road behind the car park to the Co-Op supermarket is readily accessible to the general public, but the south part of the exposure is occupied by a nursery and various shops and I wanted to notify them about the arrival of our group in the near future.

 

The old quarry face behind the Co-Op car park

The Greenmoor Rock here consists mainly of mudstone and this was exploited for brick making, as also seen at Neepsend, Chesterfield Road and Wadsley Bridge, although moderately thick beds of sandstone are seen in the upper sections.

 

The old quarry face at the southern end of Marmion Road

 

By this point, it had started to rain and, having already investigated the old quarries on Brincliffe Edge, I finished my recce here and caught the bus back to Sheffield. Having time before my bus to Treeton, I popped into Sheffield Central Library to see an exhibition of photos - LAND by Matthew Conduit - which included views of sites on the east coast of Yorkshire where alum had been quarried until the second half of the C19. 

 

Photos by Matthew Conduit at the LAND exhibition