The Upper Don Trail and Hillsborough

 

Burrowlee House

Leaving the Kilner Way Retail Park, I carried on down Halifax Road towards Hillsborough and then turned off at Herries Road, along which I continued until I reached the River Don and the Grade II Listed rock faced railway viaduct. 

 

The Herries Road railway viaduct

This was built in 1845 for the Sheffield, Ashton under Lyne and Manchester Railway Co. to a design by Joseph Locke, the eminent railway engineer who I had only become aware of a couple of weeks earlier, when visiting Locke Park in Barnsley.

 

The Greenmoor Rock on the Upper Don Trail

I only took a few photos for the British Listed Buildings website at a distance and joined the Upper Don Trail, from which I hoped to get a close look at the outcrops of Greenmoor Rock that I had seen from Hillsborough Park the previous summer. 

A detail of the Greenmoor Rock

Scrambling up the slope from the riverside path to the fenced off railway cutting, most of the exposure is mudstone, where I couldn’t distinguish any individual beds, but in places the upper section of the escarpment revealed sections of quite massive Greenmoor Rock, which needed my zoom lens to photograph. 

 

Greenmoor Rock in the upper section of the escarpment

Continuing my walk alongside the fence for a few hundred metres, making observations of the Greenmoor Rock where I could see it, I soon arrived at Wardsend Cemetery and carried on down the public footpath to the River Don, without making any attempt to explore it. 

 

Wardsend Cemetery

I then made my way down to the Penistone Road, where I took a few photos of the eastern boundary wall of Hillsborough Barracks, which is made of a massive grey/orange coloured sandstone which, as I had noticed during my investigation a few days earlier, contrasts with the uniformly yellow sandstone used for the barracks buildings. 

 

The perimeter wall at Hillsborough Barracks

My next stop, as I headed north towards Hillsborough Park, was Burrowlee House (1711), which was built for Thomas and Elizabeth Steade and has been altered and extended in the mid and late C19 and the C20; however, I was only able to view it from the street and did not have an opportunity to examine its stonework. 

 

Burrowlee House

Entering Hillsborough Park, having previously been refused permission to enter these gates by a steward during the Tramlines Festival, I photographed the Grade II Listed East Lodge and the separately listed gateway and boundary wall, which were built in the early C19. 

 

The East Lodge and gateway

 

A very coarse grained sandstone, with quite wild orange/brown colour variation, has been used here, but I didn’t examine it closely; however, I didn’t notice any well rounded pebbles that are usually seen in the Chatsworth Grit and it reminds me of the sandstone used for the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, which is considered to be the Loxley Edge Rock. 

 

A detail of the sandstone at East Lodge

From here I proceeded to the coach house and stable to Hillsborough Hall, which had been covered in scaffold and protected by heras fencing during my previous visit but, with the restoration work since completed, it is now open as the Depot Bakery.

 

The coach house to Hillsborough Hall

Moving round to its east elevation, the distinct yellow colouration of the sandstone and the cross-bedding made me think that this and the former Hillsborough Hall, also built by the Steade family, were further examples of Grenoside Sandstone, which I had seen in numerous buildings at Grenoside, Birley Edge and Birley Carr. 

 

The west elevation of Hillsborough Hall

 

Sandstone at the Kilner Way Retail Park

 

Greenmoor Rock at the Kilner Way Retail Park

During my brief investigation of Birley Carr and Wadsley Bridge, I went to have a quick look at an old quarry in the Greenmoor Rock that I first noticed nearly 40 years ago, when travelling on the bus between Sheffield and High Green, where I lived at the time. 

 

The outcrop of the Greenmoor Rock in and around Wadsley Bridge

From the Halifax Road, all I could see were the thick beds of sandstone, which I had presumed were used for building stone, but I was working as a trainee general practice surveyor for the District Valuer/Valuation Office and I didn’t take much interest in Sheffield’s geology at the time. 

 

Wadsley Bridge Brickworks on the 1906 Ordnance Survey map

 

The Greenmoor Rock, which is best known for its high quality paving at Green Moor and for high quality headstones and monuments at Brincliffe Edge, is actually extremely variable and in places this formation contains a high proportion of mudstone and shale, which has been exploited along with the underlying strata for making bricks. 

 

Greenmoor Rock at the Kilner Way Retail Park

 

The brickworks at Wadsley Bridge was opened uphill of the railway bridge, between the publication of the 1894 and 1906 editions of the Ordnance Survey maps, but vegetation and the development of the Kilner Way Retail Park has obscured the views from the Halifax Road and I had to walk to the far end of it to see the rock exposures. 

 

Greenmoor Rock at the Kilner Way Retail Park

Compared to the former Woodside Brickworks on Chesterfield Road, there is a considerably greater thickness of sandstone in this section of the Greenmoor Rock, which was probably exploited for building or paving stone, but the quarry face is fenced off and I could only take photos using the zoom lens on my Canon Powershot G7X Mark II camera.

 

A detail of the Greenmoor Rock

 

Having photographed the exposures of Geenmoor Rock, I headed back towards Halifax Road and was interested in the sandstone that has been used for the paving at the retail park. Its uniform yellow colour reminded me of the Grenoside Sandstone that I had seen earlier on my walk, but I am not aware of any instances of this rock formation being used in this way.

 

 Sandstone paving at the Kilner Way Retail Park

The retail park was redeveloped in 2010, but in very many places the stone has shown marked deterioration and in places forms a severe trip hazard, with delamination of very thin beds of sandstone from the surface revealing ripple marks. 

 

Ripple marks exposed by delamination of the sandstone paving

Although the high quality paving from the local Greenmoor Rock has long been unavailable, it is still produced near Shepley and high quality Coal Measures sandstone is still widely available from West Yorkshire and Lancashire, as well as the Rough Rock from Huddersfield, which has been widely used as paving for the Heart of the City developments in Sheffield. 

 

Advanced weathering of the paving

Using my fingers, I obtained a sample of thinly laminated light muddy brown coloured stone that had become detached, which is very fine grained and, when viewed with a hand lens, has tiny flakes of white mica scattered on the bedding plane.

 

A sample of sandstone paving at the Kilner Way Retail Park

 

Birley Carr and Wadsley Bridge

 

A detail of the Centenary Chapel on Halifax Road

Having had a quick wander around Birley Edge, to photograph its historic buildings for the British Listed Buildings website, I returned to the Greenmoor Rock escarpment and carried on down the public footpath to Back Edge. 

 

A view north from Back Edge

Leaving the escarpment, I went to find The Orchard on Fox Hill Crescent and then stopped to look at the Birley Heights housing development, where I was very surprised to see that a high retaining wall had been been built with gabions, whose strength and stability are dependent on the durability of the wire used to make them. 

 

Gabions used for a retaining wall at Birley Heights

Continuing down Fox Hill Crescent, I stopped briefly to look at a small development of one and two storied modern apartments, which are partly faced not with brick – as would probably have been expected – but with an Upper Carboniferous sandstone of unknown provenance. 

 

An apartment block faced with Upper Carboniferous sandstone

 

At Fox Hill Road, I firstly photographed the Grade II Listed sewer gas lamp, very many of which are still preserved in Sheffield, before heading down the hill towards Wadsley Bridge. The suburb of Birley Carr contains a core of late Victorian terraced houses, which are presumably built with the local Grenoside Sandstone, with the former Mount Zion Methodist Chapel (1877) being the most substantial stone building that I saw. 

 

The former Mount Zion Methodist Chapel

 

The masonry is very blackened in places, but there is enough fresh surfaces of sandstone exposed to reveal that it is cross-bedded and uniformly yellow in colour, which is characteristic of the Grenoside Sandstone that I had seen earlier in my walk at Grenoside. 

 

The former Mount Zion Methodist Chapel

Further down Fox Hill Road, there are more later Victorian terraced houses, where the masonry is also very blackened and, continuing down Parson Cross Road, I photographed a couple of recently cleaned houses. One of these is built with yellow sandstone, but the stone in the other house is much paler in colour, which from a distance looks more like the Crawshaw Sandstone. 

 

Terraced houses on Parson Cross Road

 

Reaching Halifax Road, I turned left and headed up to the Grade II Listed Hannah Rawson School (1829), now the Parsons Cross Church of England Primary School, where I asked permission to photograph its exterior. 

 

The Hannah Rawson School

I only took a few general record photos of the building, without studying the stonework closely, but when zooming into the plaque that records the endowment by Hannah Rawson, I could see that its uniform yellow colour and cross-bedding indicates another example of the Grenoside Sandstone. 

 

The plaque on the Hannah Rawson School

 

After having a quick look at the exposure of the Greenmoor Rock at Kilner Way Retail Park, which I shall describe later, I set off down the Halifax Road towards Hillsborough and stopped to photograph the Wadsley Bridge war memorial, which is made with Cornish granite in the form of a wheel cross and is surprisingly not a listed structure. 

 

Wadsley Bridge war memorial

Behind the war memorial is the former Centenary Chapel (1839), which has been fairly recently cleaned to reveal a very coarse grained gritstone, with grey to orange colour variation, which is probably Chatsworth Grit from the Rivelin Valley.

 

Views of the Centenary Chapel

 

Historic Architecture in Birley Edge

 

A view up Edge Lane in Birley Edge

Leaving the escarpment of Greenmoor Rock, my first stop in the hamlet of Birley Edge was the Grade II Listed Birley Hall Farmhouse, built between 1797 and 1827, which was the first of six buildings that I wanted to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website. 

 

Views of Birley Hall Farmhouse

 

I could only get a look at the roadside elevations, but it is built in yellow cross-bedded Grenoside Sandstone that contains a significant amount of rusty brown blocks, which was presumably obtained from the Fox Hill quarries that were worked a few hundred metres to the east. 

 

The 1855 Ordnance Survey map showing the Fox Hill Quarries

 

Looking closely with the naked eye at the dressings, I noticed that the Grenoside Sandstone used for these is medium/coarse grained and much more massive than the walling, but I didn’t spend any time closely examining the stonework. 

 

A dressing made with medium/coarse grained Grenoside Sandstone

On the opposite side of the road is Birley Old Hall (1705), which incorporates an earlier cruck frame building, but only parts of it can be clearly seen from the road and I could only get glimpses of the house, which is quite simple in style and has mullioned windows. 

 

Views of Birley Old Hall

Tucked away in the corner of the large garden at Birley Old Hall is the Falconry (c1705), a garden pavilion built in Grenoside Sandstone, with a stone tile roof, which was restored along with the main house in 1959, by D. Doncaster. 

 

The Falconry

 

A few metres north of Birley Hall Farmhouse is the old Coach House, which was built at the same time and is one of a matching pair. It is set back from Edge Lane along a private drive and again I could only view it from a distance, but I could see that Grenoside Sandstone has been used here.

 

The Coach House

I then took a quick look at the late C18 red brick built Birley House, which has very large and elongated rusticated quoins that are presumably made of local sandstone, with window and door surrounds, the band course and the parapet to the front elevation made of the same stone.

 

Birley House

 

The sandstone gate piers are also Grade II listed structures and, after taking a couple of quick snaps of these, I continued down Edge Lane to see if there were any other interesting historic architecture or details that appeal to me as a geologist.

 

The main entrance to Birley House

I went as far as the main entrance to Birley House, where Grenoside Sandstone walling flanks the gate piers. Looking closely, a few of the blocks are seen to contain contorted beds, which probably occurred before the sediment had become consolidated - a phenomenon that has been interpreted at the nearby Wharncliife Crags as a record of a seismic event.

 

Contorted Grenoside Sandstone at the entrance to Birley House

The Greenmoor Rock at Birley Edge

 

A detail of a quarried face

Arriving at Jawbone Hill from Grenoside, I immediately encountered the Birley Stone, which was first mentioned in 1161 and was probably originally a way marker on the route from Ecclesfield to Bradfield, via Oughtibridge. 

 

The Birley Stone

Taking the path that runs south along the escarpment, I soon encountered the first of many small outcrops of Greenmoor Rock, which here forms thin irregular beds that have been quarried in several places to build the dry stone boundary wall. 

 

Greenmoor Rock foundations to a dry stone field boundary wall

The characteristics of the formation here are very similar to those seen further to the north at Hunshelf Bank and Don Hill Height, contrasting with the more massive sandstone at Green Moor which was quarried extensively to produce first class paving stone. 

 

A detail of thin and irregularly bedded Greenmoor Rock

 

Although I had obtained samples of the Greenmoor Rock from various other outcrops in Sheffield, this formation is extremely variable and is often composed with finer grained mudstone, which was once exploited by several large brickworks.

 

A specimen of Greenmoor Rock

The sample I obtained with my Estwing hammer is muddy brown in colour and very fine grained, with a considerable proportion of degraded iron bearing minerals, which add to its colour, and very occasional tiny flakes of muscovite mica. 

 

A delf in the Greenmoor Rock

Continuing along the path, I encountered a number of small delfs that have been cut into the rock for building the dry stone walls, where more irregularly bedded flaggy sandstone is seen. The exposures are very discontinuous and, sometimes, the Greenmoor Rock is laid down as finer grained beds, which exhibit fine cross-lamination. 

 

Ripples in the Greenmoor Rock

I didn’t deviate from the well worn path along the escarpment but, as with the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation strata in many other parts of Sheffield, the lower slopes nearer to the River Don were once mined for coal and ganister using adits dug into the hillside. 

 

A view south along the escarpment

At one place, I followed the public footpath that runs at right angles across the field to Skew Hill, where I stopped briefly to look at the very gentle dip slope of the Greenmoor Rock and an escarpment in the distance, which is formed by the Grenoside Sandstone. 

 

A panoramic view showing scarp and dip slopes

In a few places, there are small outcrops adjacent to or along the path, where the bedding planes exhibit good examples of ripples. These are probably not the result of quarrying, which appears to be confined to the uppermost section of the Greenmoor Rock. 

 

An exposure of Greenmoor Rock along the path

Approaching the hamlet of Birley Edge, there is a more substantial rock face, which in one place has a series of drill holes that are a common site in quarries where blocks of building stone has been extracted by using plugs and feathers; however, there is no quarry marked here on any of the old Ordnance Survey maps that I have seen. 

 

A section of Greenmoor Rock with drill holes

On the day, the Don Valley was shrouded in haze, which obscured the views to Worrall, Wadsley and landmarks in the city centre but, although less than 1 km from the Birley Stone to Birley Edge, it was one of the most interesting parts of rural Sheffield that I had visited for a long time.

 

The walk from the Birley Stone to Birley Edge