Wardsend Cemetery Revisted

 

A view of headstones in the 1901 extension to Wardsend Cemetery

 

The day after my recce for a field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group - from the Sheffield Botanical Gardens to Endcliffe Park and Ecclesall Road - I returned to Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park to coincide with a gathering of volunteers who attend on a monthly basis to clear vegetation and undertake other practical tasks.

 

A view along the public footpath

Having made an arrangement with Howard, who I had briefly seen with Hugh earlier in the week, I was introduced to various people and then I set off to explore the part of the cemetery above the railway line, where 2 acres of land just below the outcrop of Greenmoor Rock was added in 1901.

Another view along the public footpath

I had passed through this part of the cemetery a couple of years earlier, when walking from Burngreave to Owlerton, when I was very surprised to see an area of scrubland full of traditional sandstone headstones, which from a distance looked liked others that I seen in various Victorian cemeteries in Sheffield.

 

Old quarries on Brincliffe Edge

 

All of these headstones, I have always presumed, are made from the variety of Greenmoor Rock known in Sheffield as Brincliffe Edge Rock, which was extracted from several quarries on Brincliffe Edge and along the escarpment down to Hunter’s Bar and Brocco Bank.

 

Headstones of Anne Biggin and Ernest Faulkner

 

The simple slabs of Anne Biggin (d.1906) and Ernest Faulkner (d.1940) have essentially identical designs, which are a complete break from the Gothic form and are more akin to the kerbed headstones of John Dyson (1931) and Henry Lindley (d.1933).

 

Headstones of John Dyson and Henry Lindley

 

I didn’t closely examine the sandstone used for any of these headstones, but my initial impression was that they are not locally quarried Brincliffe Edge Rock, which is very fine grained and has a very distinct blueish/greenish colour. By 1920, Stancliffe Darley Dale stone from the Ashover Grit had become a common material for Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones and Crosses of Sacrifice in South Yorkshire.

 

The kerbed headstone of Eliza and Robert Hooton

From the public footpath, I could see that the kerbed headstone of Eliza Hooton (d.1928) and her husband Robert (d.1928) is made of a stone that I immediately thought was white Carrara marble from Italy, which has lead lettering – including the abbreviation B&CCS, which marks this as the work of the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society.

The headstone commemorating members of the Austick family

Next to this is another white marble kerbed headstone, which commemorates Annie (d.1933) and her father Frederick Austick (d.1946) and his wife Ann (d.1958). Although I had my hand lens, steel penknife and bottle of hydrochloric acid in my rucksack, I didn’t think it necessary to apply these standard tests, to confirm its composition but, when enlarging my high resolution photos, I can see calcite veins in the marble that have been highlighted by weathering.

 

The headstone of Harriet Middleton

 

Behind these headstones is another white stone monument that commemorates Harriet Middleton (d.1936), which has inscribed lettering, but I didn’t attempt to get to it through the brambles and thick undergrowth; however, from my photos, I can see that it has a completely different texture, which weathered out shell fragments indicating that it is Portland limestone.

 

Carrara marble headstones obscured algae, moss and lichen

 

Without leaving the footpath, I could see various other headstones, dating from 1917 to 1955, which I thought were probably further examples of Carrara marble, but were partly obscured by red and green algae, moss and lichen and I can’t determine their texture from my photographs.

 

The memorial to William Else and his family

 

In addition to the sandstones, marble and limestone, I also encountered a few headstones that are made from various igneous rocks, with the most interesting being those that are made in gabbro, which are probably from the Bushveld Complex at Rustenburg in South Africa.

The memorial to members of the Newton family

One commemorates William Else (d. 1923) his wife Sarah (d.1929) and two infant children aged 3 weeks and 2 years, with the other dedicated to George Newton (d.1910), his mother Jane (d.1930) and his father Edward (d.1942).

The headstone of Tom Wharton

Another gabbroic headstone - a stone of unknown provenance marketed under the name black granite - is that of Tom Wharton (d.1933), an extremely dedicated fan of Sheffield Wednesday F.C. who was buried in an unmarked grave, but a crowd funding project, aimed at supporters of the club, enabled this to be made.

Grey granite memorials

Having spent over an hour looking at this upper section of the cemetery, I found a couple of medium grained grey granites that I didn’t inspect closely, but which may be Scottish, then got talking to Lynne, another committee member of the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery.

A plan of Wardsend Cemetery

Although we had never met before, I discovered that this was the same Lynne who had been sharing very many of my Language of Stone Blog posts that I had tweeted on the social media platform now known as X. Although the rest of the volunteers had packed in for the day, she kindly took me on a very quick tour of plots L to T.

The headstone of George Beaumont

Adjoining the path next to the railway line, the headstone – with a footstone depicting a football - records the accidental death of George Beaumont in 1877 who, when trying to retrieve a ball during a football match, climbed over a wall and fell to his death in the adjoining quarry.

The footstone of George Beaumont

Continuing to the headstone of Samuel Wood (d.1858) and his family, the use of Welsh slate is a great surprise, given that the best monumental grade Brincliffe Edge Rock was being produced in great quantities only 5 km away as the crow flies.

The headstone of Samuel Wood

My second very brief visit to Wardsend Cemetery ended with a quick look at the tomb of Charles Burgon (d.1894), of Burgon and Ball, which developed its reputation as a supplier of sheep shears and is still a leading manufacturer of garden tools.

The tomb of Charles Burgon

I just took a couple of quick general photographs of this and didn’t take much notice of the stone that it is made from but, looking at my photos of this very dirty tomb, it looks like that this could be another example of Kemnay granite.

A detail of the inscription on the Charles Burgon tomb