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

 

A Recce in Sheffield Botanical Gardens

 

A block of coal in the Evolution Garden

For the November 2023 meeting of the Sheffield U3A Geology Group at the Sheffield General Cemetery, the plan for the afternoon was for me to lead the group from the Kenwood Hall Hotel through Nether Edge to Brincliffe Edge and then down Ecclesall Road to examine the Greenmoor Rock – here known as the Brincliffe Edge Rock – in quarry exposures and building stones.

 

The geology around Ecclesall Road and Nether Edge

Due to the cold weather, the day was cut short but, following the postponement of the April field trip to Alport Castles, which I had always considered to be badly thought out, I stepped forward to arrange a field trip that would include a walk around Nether Edge and an exploration of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens and Endcliffe Park.

 

A map of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens

Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, while exploring the Sheffield Board Schools and undertaking many British Listed Buildings Photo Challenges, I had discovered several places in Sheffield where I could devise an ‘urban geology’ field trip for the group and the riven paving stones on Thompson Road – probably locally quarried Brincliffe Edge Rock - was a good start.

 

Paving on Thompson Road

 

The Grade II Listed gatepiers at the entrance to Sheffield Botanical Gardens are built with a medium grained sandstone with a uniform colour and texture, which looks like the same stone used for the glasshouses. On my previous visit in November 2021, I had a good look at both of these and concluded that it is probably Stoke Hall stone from the Kinderscout Grit at Grindleford.

 

The gatepiers on Thompson Road

 

The south lodge is built with another sandstone that is again quite different to those previously seen, but I can’t readily identify it. The nearest source of stone for general walling is the Brincliffe Edge Rock, which was produced by several quarries in the near vicinity, but the medium grain size and colour is not typical of this formation and it could be Crawshaw Sandstone.

 

The walling stone at the south lodge

My next stop was the Evolution Garden, where the Lepidodendron stump and the large blocks of coal provide the geological highlights of the gardens, with no similar specimens now being seen in any other part of Sheffield - although a replica of the now buried stumps at Middlewood Hospital can be found at Wadsley Park Village.

 

The Lepidodendron and blocks of coal

 

Post of the gardens are underlain by mudstones and the recent heavy rain had made it waterlogged and quite slippery in places. Taking care while crossing areas of muddy ground, I got back on to the footpath and made my way past several large blocks of massive, cross-bedded gritstone that was presumably obtained from the Chatsworth Grit in the Rivelin Valley.

 

The Rock and Water Garden

Large blocks of gritstone and flagstones are also used extensively in the Rock and Water Garden, which was redesigned in 1926 by Clarence Elliott, the gardener and naturalist who was also responsible for Whinfell Quarry Garden.

 

The blue plaque for Robert Marnock

Continuing to the north gateway, which is built with coarse grained Chatsworth Grit, which contains quartz pebbles the size of a little fingernail, I was interested to see the blue plaque for Robert Marnock, who was a consultant for Sheffield General Cemetery and designed the gardens in Weston Park and Kenwood Hall.

 

Various stones and rocks in the pavilions

 

One of my previous visits to the Sheffield Botanical Gardens, which coincided with an Art in the Gardens event, I was interested to see that scattered amongst the various tropical plants and cacti, which were laid out in large Stoke Hall stone planters in the pavilions - following the restoration in 2003 – there are numerous large rock and mineral specimens, which include rough siltstone slabs, well rounded sandstone boulders and lumps of gypsum. 

 

Rough siltstone slabs in the pavilions

Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park

 

An information board at Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park

Towards the end of February 2024, prompted by a committee member who had read my Language of Stone Blog post about my walk from Burngreave to Owlerton, I was contacted on Facebook by the Chair of the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery, to ask if I could help to produce a geological guide for Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park. 

 

The location of Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park

 

Having been involved with projects at Bolsterstone, the Sheffield General Cemetery and Moorgate Cemetery in Rotherham, as well as photographing very many Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones, I was very interested in the idea – especially since I had visited their stand at the Sheffield Heritage Fair the previous year, when I was impressed by the various projects that were being developed there. 

 

A leaflet about Wardsend Cemetery

 

On the two occasions that I had visited the cemetery, with the last time being towards the end of a walk from Birley Edge, I had been following the outcrop of the Greenmoor Rock, which at Wadsley Bridge, the Upper Don Trail and Parkwood Springs is split into two leaves and at Neepsend is predominantly argillaceous – a property that made this formation suited to brick making. 

 

The geology around Wardsend Cemetery and Parkwood Springs

 

Due to a combination of a persistent muscle strain and continuing bad weather since my trip to Pilsley and Baslow in February, which turned out to be the 4th wettest on record, March passed without going out on any trips and I finally arranged to meet with Howard and Hugh at the cemetery in the first week of April. 

 

A view of the escarpment of Greenmoor Rock from Livesey Street

 

Alighting from the Supertram at Hillsborough, I made my way along Bradfield Road to Livesey Street, where there is a view of the escarpment of the Greenmoor Rock beyond the Owlerton Stadium. Continuing along this, I was very interested to see a long stretch of rubble walling on another road that is also called Livesey Street, which is built with Carboniferous Limestone. 

 

A wall built with Carboniferous Limestone on Livesey Street

I arrived at the cemetery in plenty of time for my meeting and had a quick look at the area around to the north of the old chapel, where the Hillsborough Barracks war memorial is in the form of a simple obelisk made of a massive sandstone. 

 

The site of the chapel

During previous visits, I had walked down the path from the railway line and was surprised to see what is effectively woodland, in which I noted that the vast majority of headstones are relatively plain slabs of a type that can be seen in the oldest parts of the large Victorian cemeteries that I had encountered in Sheffield – including Burngreave, Abbey Lane and City Road. 

 

Victorian headstones

These, I have always presumed, are made from the variety of the Greenmoor Rock that is known in Sheffield as the Brincliffe Edge Rock, which was famed for its memorial quality stone supplied by several quarries located on the escarpment that runs from Brincliffe Edge down to Brocco Bank. 

 

The Westnedge family memorial

As with most cemeteries that I have visited, I had expected to see a various large granite memorials, but the Westnedge family memorial (1879), in the form of an obelisk with a hipped slab on a sandstone  plinth at the base, is the only one that I saw. 

 

A hipped tomb slab at the Westnedge memorial

Looking closely at the hipped slab, I recognised the pale grey granite slab as being Kemnay granite, which was formed during the Caledonian orogeny approximately 475 million years ago (mya) in the Ordovician period. It is classified as a biotite-muscovite granite, with the alignment of the black biotite giving it a foliated appearance, due to subsequent regional metamorphism.

 

A detail of the Kemnay granite on the hipped slab

This is one of the granites that I first encountered, when learning stone identification and matching skills in the building restoration industry. Described in the late Dr. Eric Robinson’s London Illustrated Geological Walks as having an oatmeal texture, it was one of many granites quarried in Aberdeen and along with the Tom’s Forest Grey variety was included in the Triton Stone Library – which will soon reappear in a new form at the Redmires building at Sheffield Hallam University. 

 

A detail of the grey granite used for the obelisk

The stepped plinth is made of a very similar granite, which has a similar mineralogy except that the biotite is slightly more abundant but is not foliated. The general colour has made me think that this could be Rubislaw granite (470 mya) which was also quarried in Aberdeen, but this typically has a greater ferromagnesian mineral content, which typically makes it much darker. 

 

Red granite on the Westnedge memorial

 

I think that the red granite is Ross of Mull granite from the Silurian period (425 mya), which has dark red potassium feldspars that appear slightly fractured. A distinctive characteristic of this granite is not only the colour of the feldspar but it also contains small amounts of greenish hornblende, which I can just discern when enlarging my photographs. 

 

A detail of the Ross of Mull granite

 

Following the path towards the railway for a short distance, I noted a couple of kerbed headstones from the late inter-war period that I think are made of the dark pink Silurian Peterhead granite (425 mya) and a grey granite from the Permian Cornubian Batholith (280-275 mya), which outcrops as the tors of Devon and Cornwall. 

 

A kerbed headstone made of Peterhead granite

 

When Howard and Hugh turned up, we had a talk about the various projects that were being planned and, in particular, I was interested to note that it was intended to incorporate these into plans for the regeneration of Parkwood Springs, which has been awarded £19m Levelling Up funding. I had highlighted the geological importance of Parkwood Springs to various members of the Friends of Parkwood Springs in recent years at the Sheffield Heritage Fair and this therefore presented a good opportunity to take this forward. 

 

A kerbed headstone made with granite from the Cornubian Batholith

 

I had hoped to take a much better look at the rest of the cemetery but Hugh, who had done most of the work on the headstones, had to get to another appointment. Making arrangements to meet again during the meeting of the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery on the coming Saturday, I returned to Sheffield and whilst doing some shopping at LIDL, I stopped to photograph the old paving stones on Mulberry Street, which I think are an example of the use of the Rough Rock for paving, which is the first that I have seen in the city centre.

 

Rough Rock paving on Mulberry Street

 

A Walk From Pilsley to Baslow

 

A panoramic view of Baslow Edge

My exploration of the historic architecture of Pilsley took me 2 hours and 10 minutes, with well over half of this time spent talking to people who I had met and briefly visiting Chatsworth Farm Shop and, just before setting off on my walk to Baslow, I bumped into a walking group from Sheffield who I also got talking to. 

 

My route from Pilsley to Baslow

 

Eventually continuing on my way, I stopped by the roadside to take in the view towards Baslow Edge, which I had traversed a couple of years earlier when taking a good look at the Chatsworth Grit that is exposed between Clodhall Crossroads and Fox House. 

 

A panoramic view

 

While taking a few more photographs of the gritstone edges on the skyline, the Sheffield walking group soon overtook me and, seeing that that they were taking the same public footpaths that I had planned for my walk, I followed them along the roadand across the fields. 

 

The Sheffield walking group

 

When leaving the village, the road follow the dip slope of the Ashover Grit, which outcrops in the area has a dip of about 5 degrees to the east; however, when taking the public footpath that heads north, it drops down steeply for 50 metres into a wooded valley along which runs the A619 road. 

 

The geology between Pilsley and Baslow

 

I had driven along this road very many times, which here forms an accident black spot known as the 13 Bends and, while keeping my eyes on the road, never realised that it occupied a valley cut down through the Ashover Grit into the mudstones and siltstones of the Marsden Formation by a precursor to Rymas Brook. 

 

The topography between Pilsley and Baslow

Taking my time to walk down the public footpath, which was quite steep and muddy in places, I had a good look at the topography of my surroundings, which I hadn’t appreciated before. By the time I reached the A619, members of the walking group were still waiting to cross this busy road.

 

The public footpath down to the A619

Following them up the hillside on the other side of the A619 and crossing Wheatlands Lane, I then followed the public footpath alongside a dry stone wall down towards Baslow. In places this was extremely muddy, following the recent period of heavy rain that had led to the cancellation of a field trip to Cressbrook Dale earlier in the week. 

 

The footpath from Wheatlands Lane to Baslow

I stopped very briefly to have a look one section of the dry stone boundary wall, where the gritstone was home to an extremely thick covering of moss, which looked liked the sphagnum that I had seen in the boggy ground formed at springs beneath the Chatsworth Grit at Burbage Edge. 

 

Spaghnum moss on a gritstone boundary wall

 

Reaching the Grade I Listed Baslow Bridge (1608), I stopped for a moment to take in the views of the River Derwent, which was in full flow, along with the uncommon C13 broach spire of the Grade II* Listed St. Anne’s church. 

 

A view from Baslow Old Bridge

 

Crossing over the bridge, I took a couple of photos of the tollbooth, which had been repaired since my previous visit and then a photo of the K6 telephone kiosk, which was one of the 12 listed buildings that was recorded on a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Baslow. 

 

The tollbooth on Baslow Old Bridge

 

Continuing to School Lane, the Grade II Listed Corner Cottage and Willow Cottage were next on my list to photograph. The Historic England description says that they possibly date to the C17, with C18 and C19 additions, but I didn't look at them closely and only took a couple of photos, from which I noted the gritstone walling and the stone slate roof. 

 

Corner Cottage and Willow Cottage

From the road, I took a photo of Baslow House, which is surprisingly not a listed building but has some interesting features, including two 2-storey bay windows and a large entrance porch that are built in gritstone with some elaborate carving.

 

Baslow House

 

Noting the time before I had to catch the No. 218 bus back to Sheffield, I continued up School Lane to The Old Chapel (1706), an elegantly proportioned building constructed with squared and coursed gritstone, with massive quoins and dressings to the central doorway, which has a segmental arch and a keystone. 

 

The Old Chapel