Heritage Open Days in Walkley

 

A view along the nave at St. Mary's church

On the day after undertaking a recce for the Nether Edge Festival and having another quick walk through Sheffield General Cemetery, I returned to Sheffield on the second day of the 2024 Heritage Open Days festival, with an intention of visiting some of the places that were open in Walkley. 

 

Walkley Community Centre

 

The first of these was the Walkley Community Centre, which although not a listed building was originally built in 1909 as the Walkley Reform Club and is an important community venue. It still has its original features and fittings and war memorial glass in the snooker room, but when I arrived it was not yet open to the general public.

 

The datestone at Walkley Community Centre

 

The Walkley Ebenezer Methodist Church was not yet open either and so I proceeded to the Grade II listed St. Mary’s church, which I had only briefly photographed from the outside during a previous visit to Walkley as part of a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge.

 

St. Mary's church

It was a very overcast day and I didn’t take much notice of the details of the exterior but, according to the Pevsner Architectural Guide to Sheffield by Ruth Harman, the chancel and 2 bays of a mission church were built in 1861 and the nave, aisles, north-west tower and broach spire were added in 1869 by John Grey Weightman, in association with T.A. Wilson in 1869. 

 

The tower of St. Mary's church

I just took a few more general record photographs before entering the church and going to find the Walkley Historians, who I had met a few times at the Sheffield Heritage Fair and had suggested that I give a talk or lead a walk for them. 

 

St. Mary's church

 

The interior of the church was really gloomy and, with much of the masonry plastered over except for the arcades, I just took a few photographs of the nave and the arcades. I didn’t look at these closely, but the massive nature of the drums to the columns suggests that this is Chatsworth Grit, which is used as dressings to the Crawshaw Sandstone walling in the external fabric. 

 

The west arcade

Moving into the chancel, which is fully plastered, I had a quick look around to see if there were any decorative stones, as I had often seen in later Victorian churches, but I saw nothing of interest to this Language of Stone Blog. 

 

The chancel

When returning to the nave, however, the very fine grained texture and very pale cream colour of the pulpit (1901) caught my eye and it made me immediately think that it is made of Caen stone, as has been used for the font and reredos at St. John’s church (1887) in Ranmoor.

 

The pulpit

 

Although not an expert in decorative stones, I was interested to see that the pulpit  has colonnettes that I think might be made of the polished limestones, Cork Red and Ashburton ‘marbles’, and a true marble from Connemara, but I didn’t get good photographs in the poor light. 

Colonnettes on the font

Sheffield General Cemetery Revisited

 

The monument to Eliza West and Charles Cann

Having quickly completed my recce for the Nether Edge Festival, I wanted to make the most of the sunshine and headed off to south-west entrance to Sheffield General Cemetery, stopping briefly to photograph the Grade II Listed Montague House (c.1836) – one of the three structures thought to be by Samuel Worth and built with coarse grained and often pebbly Chatsworth Grit. 

 

Montague House

 

I have briefly visited Sheffield General Cemetery on several occasions, with the last time being on the November 2023 Sheffield U3A Geology field trip, when the afternoon walk around Nether Edge was effectively cancelled due to the very cold weather – as briefly described in my report on a recce of Cressbrook Dale – but I have never fully explored it. 

 

The map of Sheffield General Cemetery

 

Making my way down the path to Sandford’s Walk, I then continued down the path at the top of the catacombs (1836), which had fallen into a state of considerable disrepair and were restored during the programme of refurbishment of the cemetery from 2021 to 2023. 

 

An information board explaining the history of the catacombs

 

I had previously walked along the path beneath the catacombs, but had never realised that in 1937 a third tier was added using 140 burial boxes made of reinforced concrete. By the turn of the C19, severe cracks had become apparent in the stonework of the lower parts, and the boxes were removed to improve the structural stability during the restoration, with one now on display.

 

A detail of the retained concrete burial box

 

Continuing down the walkway, I stopped briefly to have a quick look at the memorial to Eliza West (d.1916) and her husband Charles Cann (d.1929), which is built with two different granites. During the Heritage Open Days event in 2023, led by Peter Kennett, I was too busy taking photos to hear Peter describe these and he does not mention them in the geological trail published in 2001. 

 

The monument to Eliza West and Charles Cann

 

The dark red granite looks to me like the variety from the Ross of Mull, which is the largest peninsula on the Isle of Mull off the west coast of Scotland. The grey variety might be from Aberdeen, but the granite from the Rubislaw Quarry, which is the most well known granite from this area, is typically a darker grey in colour. 

 

A detail of the granites at the Eliza West and Charles Cann monument

 

Reaching the end of the walkway, I then headed along the Robert Marnock pathway past the catacombs until I reached the Stone Spiral, which was designed by Adrian Hallam and installed in 2024 using sandstones, crinoidal limestone, dolomitic limestone, granites and slate from the UK. 

 

The Stone Spiral

As seen in the photograph used for the accompanying Rock in the General Cemetery leaflet, the large lumps of rock used for this wonderful educational resource have since been obscured by a natural patina, dirt and algae, which makes it very difficult to identify each type of stone. 

 

The Rock in the General Cemetery leaflet

At the Montague Street entrance to the cemetery, there is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) screen wall, which commemorates the 40 military personnel that perished during WWI. Sheffield General Cemetery was considered too dilapidated to have CWGC headstones there and the screen wall was placed in Sheffield City Cemetery, but it was relocated to its present site in 2015.

The screen wall