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