A Walk From Darnall to Attercliffe

 

The aqueduct on the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal

Just before leaving Darnall Cemetery, where I had photographed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones and found some unusual headstones made with various stones, I had a quick look at the sandstone used to build the north-western boundary wall. 

 

A dry stone wall made with flaggy sandstone in Darnall Cemetery

 

In one place very thinly bedded flaggy sandstone has been laid as a dry stone wall, which is a characteristic of the Brincliffe Edge (Greenmoor) Rock and to a lesser extent the Penistone Flags, both of which are Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation sandstones. It is extremely unlikely that this would be brought in for a dry stone wall, but I don’t ever recall seeing other walling like this in this part of South Yorkshire and its source is a bit of a mystery. 

 

The geological map of the area around Darnall and Attercliffe

In the area around Darnall and Attercliffe, unnamed sandstones from the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation (PMCMF) provide the underlying geology and another section of the wall is built with more massive plane bedded sandstone, which is essentially grey with some iron staining. It is similar to the sandstone seen in the boundary wall of St. Lawrence’s churchyard and along Bawtry Road in Tinsley, which is again underlain by an unnamed PMCMF sandstone. 

 

A section of wall made with massive sandstone in Darnall Cemetery

I then set off along Darnall Road past the Ball Inn and the former Darnall Road Board School to undertake my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, which consisted of 6 brick built industrial buildings that formed part of the various steelworks that once operated in Darnall, but have very little interest to this Language of Stone Blog.

 

The listed buildings on my Photo Challenge

The former Sanderson's Darnall Steelworks and Don Valley Glassworks on Darnall Road, which is a Scheduled Monument, contains four Grade II listed buildings comprising two sets of crucible steel shops (1871 and 1872), the former offices (c.1872) and the lodge, weighbridge cabin and boundary wall (c.1872).

 

Listed buildings at the Sanderson's Darnall Steelworks

 

Continuing down Darnall Road, the Grade II listed workshop (1913) at the Darnall Works was the next building on my list. It is an example example of a steel framed structure with glass and brick infill panels and concrete dressings, with a corrugated iron roof, but to my eye doesn't possess great architectural merit. 

 

The workshop at the Darnall Works

Although not on my list, I took a couple of general record photos of the aqueduct and adjoining raised footways that form part of the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal, before retracing my steps and heading along Allende Way to Coleridge Road, to find the last building on my Photo Challenge. 

 

The aqueduct on the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal

The crucible steel melting shop (c.1890), now a store, was built for Huntsman and Co. which had associations with Benjamin Huntsman, the inventor of the crucible steel making process, whose tomb can be found in the graveyard of Attercliffe Chapel. 

 

The crucible steel melting shop

Walking down to Pothouse Bridge, I was quite surprised to see that the boundary walls on both sides of the road are built with sandstone similar to the massive stone seen in the walls of Darnall Cemetery. Except for window cills and heads, red brick is used for all of the industrial buildings and associated housing that I had seen and several brickworks in the area are marked on the old Ordnance Survey maps. 

A boundary wall on Coleridge Road

Although the brick pits would be mainly extracting the mudstone, the associated unnamed sandstones would presumably have been good enough to use for boundary walls in the immediate vicinity such as this, because the transport of stone adds significantly to its cost. 

 

Crozzle topping a boundary wall

 

As is very commonly seen in Sheffield in the boundary walls of later Victorian houses, one of the walls is topped with a type of slag known locally as crozzle, which was formed during the cementation process of making steel. 

 

The aqueduct on the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal

 

Having completed my Photo Challenge, I completed my walk by walking along the canal towpath back to Attercliffe, with my first stop being the aqueduct that I had seen 20 minutes earlier. As with many other civil engineering projects in Sheffield, such as the Wicker Arches, it uses the coarse grained and often pebbly Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley. 

 

Supports on the Shirland Lane Bridge

Continuing along the towpath to the Shirland Lane Bridge, I stopped briefly to have another look at the PMCMF sandstone that forms its foundations, where the same colouration as in the boundary wall on Coleridge Road can be seen. 

 

PMCMF sandstone beneath Shirland Lane Bridge

 

I had found this in April 2021, when investigating the Dunsil Coal and associated Coal Measures strata a little further along the canal and just took a few photos before leaving the towpath at Pinfold Bridge and walking to Attercliffe Road, where I caught a bus to Sheffield.

 

PMCMF sandstone beneath Shirland Lane Bridge