War Graves in Burngreave Cemetery

 

A detail of the headstone of Eliza Willis

Following on from my recce for the June 2023 field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, which explored Anston Stones Wood and the old quarries of North Anston, my last trip in May was to Burngreave Cemetery, which I had briefly explored when photographing its twin chapels and Cross of Sacrifice a couple of years earlier, for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge. 

 

Romancing the Stones

 

The following spring, I was subsequently asked to contribute a short article to the Burngreave Messenger entitled Romancing the Stones – an initiative involving the geological educational value of graveyards and cemeteries that has essentially continued with the Bolsterstone Graveyard Project, the “Let’s talk about the stones” walk around Boston Park and Moorgate Cemetery in Rotherham – and with a proposed future project at Wardsend Cemetery. 

 

A Google Map view of Burngreave Cemetery

 

On my visit, I had only photographed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstones in the vicinity of the Cross of Sacrifice, but looking at the CWGC Microsoft Excel database for Burngreave Cemetery, a total of 298 war graves are listed in the cemetery, which is spread over approximately 16 hectares.

 

A plan of Burngreave Cemetery

 

With the benefit of a plan of the plots in the cemetery and making use of the War Graves Photographic Project website, I narrowed down this total to a list of 40 standard headstones that either had regimental crests not encountered before or were made of granite – a stone used for very many headstones, which can be quite varied in colour and texture and not easy to identify. 

 

My list of war graves to find in Burngreave Cemetery

 

My planned exploration was not straightforward, with parts of the cemetery being wooded or quite heavily overgrown and the underlying Silkstone Rock, Parkgate Rock and intervening softer strata giving it quite a varied topography. On previous visits to various cemeteries in Sheffield, my search for CWGC headstones had been quite random and I therefore undertook a lot of preparation for this systematic search. 

 

The geology at Burngreave Cemetery

 

After catching a bus from Arundel Gate in Sheffield to Ellesmere Road, I photographed Carr Wood House and the north lodge to the cemetery on Scott Road before starting at plot JJ, where I immediate found the Portland limestone headstone of Rifleman A. Stokes of the Queen Victoria's Rifles – a regiment from the Territorial Army. 

 

A detail of the headstone of Rifleman A. Stokes

 

The next headstone that I encountered was for Worker H.V. Ryan, who is described as an Australian Munitions Worker, one of more than 5000 Australian nationals who volunteered to come to Britain, as chemists and other skilled workers, to assist with the production of munitions. 

 

A detail of the headstone of Worker H.V. Ryan

 

Apart from the inscription, there is only a very simple cross and the headstone is made in a dark grey granite of a similar type to one that I had seen at Abbey Lane and Crookes cemeteries which, having sent photos of these to the CWGC, I was informed could be the Vire Blanc or Glenaby granites from France, which was used as an alternative to Scottish Rubislaw granite. 

 

The headstone of Serjeant H. Brown

 

This granite has as a blue/grey colour that is the result of a high concentration of quite large irregular crystals of a ferromagnesian mineral, which could be hornblende rather than the usual biotite. It is is quite even grained without the development of phenocrysts, but the headstone to Serjeant H. Brown of the Yorkshire Regiment, where the regimental crest is indiscernible, has large clots of this mineral. 

 

The headstone of Private W. Sheppard

The headstone of Private W. Sheppard of the Notts & Derby Regiment, otherwise known as the Sherwood Foresters, was not on my list of headstones to photograph but its colour, gently inclined cross-lamination and general appearance distinguishes it as a sandstone, which may be an example of Woodkirk Blue stone – as seen at Moorgate Cemetery and Wadsley parish church. 

 

A detail of the headstone of Private W. Sheppard

I next encountered the French granite headstones of Private S.M. Creswick of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and Private G.H. Bradley of the East Yorkshire Regiment but, as with many of these granite headstones, I could not make out their regimental crests and I carried on until I found the headstone of Private J.J. White of the York and Lancaster Regiment. 

 

The Inver granite headstone of Private J.J. White

 

Although I had seen very many examples of this regimental crest, the headstone provides an example of a replacement Scottish Inver granite headstone, which has feldspars that are slightly pink in colour. The headstone was made in 2002, with the inscription and the regimental crest being cut with a CNC milling machine – as also seen in the headstone of Private E.H. Crookes of the Army Service Corps. 

 

A detail of the headstone of Private E.H. Crookes

The headstone of Staff Sergeant A.L. Bellinger of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (d.1950) has clipped shoulders, which is the distinguishing characteristic of those commissioned by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), which fall outside the core WWI and WWII dates of the CWGC. 

 

Possible Hopton Wood limestone headstones

I have seen innumerable buildings built with Portland limestone and I can immediately recognise this, and where used in CWGC headstones, but this one lacks the abundant bivalve shells that usually stand proud when the stone is weathered – as does the headstone of Private S.D. Wood of the East Yorkshire Regiment - and these could be Hopton Wood limestone.

 

Various Botticino 'marble' headstones

 

Including Private G. Mann of the Royal Fusiliers, Corporal T.J. Morrissey of the Rifle Brigade, Gunner J. Talbot of the Royal Horse Artillery and Lance Corporal R.J. Ord of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, there are several examples of Botticino ‘marble’, a Jurassic limestone from Brescia in Italy. 

 

A detail of the headstone of T.J. Morrissey

This polished limestone has been used to make replacement headstones and, quite often, the CWGC record for the headstone contains the monumental mason’s worksheet, which gives the date of the new headstone. The degree of weathering can be determined by the appearance of the stylolites in this stone and, interestingly, the headstone of T. J. Morrissey (1980) appears to be less weathered than G. Mann (1992).

 

A detail of the headstone of Private G. Mann

The twin headstones of Boy Telegraphist H. Willis of the Royal Navy and Head Cook Eliza Willis of the Voluntary Aid Detachment are both made of granite but the former is much darker in colour and looks like the French granite previously seen, but the latter is much lighter in colour and looks like a different variety. 

 

Headstones of Boy Telegraphist H. Willis and Head Cook Eliza Willis

 

In total, I photographed 87 headstones over a period of 2½ hours and managed to find all of those on my list, with the last one being that of Private C. Whitlam of the East Yorkshire Yeomanry, where the crest has a motif of a running fox cut into the Portland stone.

 

A detail of the headstone of Private C. Whitlam

 

A Recce in North Anston

 

Part of the Clark's Stones on Penny Piece Lane

The recce of Anston Stones Wood for the June 2023 Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip, which I had undertaken with a relatively new member Carol, had taken nearly 2½ hours but it fitted in with my timing to have lunch at the Anston Parish Council car park, where we had started our walk. 

 

The 1892 Ordnance Survey map showing quarries in North Anston

 

For the second leg of our field trip, my plan was to explore the site of the old quarries in North Anston where the Anston Quarry, owned by the Duke of Leeds, supplied most of the dolomitic limestone from the Permian Cadeby Formation that was used to rebuild the Palace of Westminster after the Great Fire of 1834. 

 

A satellite view of the redeveloped old quarries and lime kilns

 

Most of the area occupied by the quarries and lime kilns has now been redeveloped for housing, with street names such as Quarry Lane and Limekilns giving clues to its industrial history. On one of my previous visits to North Anston, I had discovered that some of the faces of the Greenland Quarry can still be seen and a quarry face forms the boundary of the gardens along Limekilns. 

 

The LiDAR map of the old quarries in North Anston

 

The LiDAR map of the area shows several areas within the new housing estate where there are well defined vertical features, which probably also form exposures of rock in more back gardens but I hadn’t yet seen any on my visits to North Anston. 

 

The topography of North Anston

Setting off from the car park after having our lunch, our walk up Ryton Road to Main Street and along to Hillside entailed a distance of less than 600 metres and an ascent of only 16 metres, but we passed from the mudstones of the Pennine Upper Coal Measures Formation (MUCMF) to the Cadeby Formation across the Carboniferous-Permian unconformity. 

 

Small outcrops of reef limestone forming the base of a boundary wall

 

Noting the small outcrops of reef limestone that form the foundation of the boundary wall to No. 9 Hillside, we headed north through The Green past a few Grade II Listed buildings in the North Anston Conservation Area to Quarry Lane, before continuing to Greenlands Park, to look at the thinly bedded dolomitic limestone exposed in an old quarry face. 

 

Thinly bedded limestone in Greenlands Park

 

The remaining quarry face of the Greenland Quarry, which I had noted on my previous visit, was quite overgrown and not easily accessible for a close inspection and we continued our recce by following the footpath down to Limekilns and the snicket to Penny Piece Lane. 

 

The overgrown face of the Greenlands Quarry

 

After sharing a Language of Stone Blog post on Facebook, which briefly described the geology of the area, I was informed that outcrops of reef limestone can be seen on Penny Piece Place, which I later learned are marked as Clark’s Stones on the old Ordnance Survey maps. 

 

Reef limestone at Clark's Stones

 

While Carol and I were examining the reef from the footpath, the owner of the house came out and, after I had explained what we were doing, he invited us into his back garden where there is an even bigger mass of rock, which is as good an example of a bryozoan reef as those seen at the Wood Lee Common SSSI in Maltby. 

 

Another example of reef limestone at Clark's Stones

 

The reef was densely covered in vegetation, which has been partly cleared and we were told that this spectacular ‘rockery’ was one of the reasons for buying the house and it now forms the centrepiece of an immaculately kept garden. 

 

Another overgrown exposure of reef limestone at Clark's Stones

 

After being let out of the back gate onto Quarry Lane, I noticed another outcrop to the rear of the adjoining house and a house on its upper north side also has a large exposure of limestone in its garden, but I don’t know if this is another part of Clark’s Stones or it is a quarry face. 

 

An exposure of limestone on Quarry Lane

 

Making our way along Quarry Lane, I was interested to see that one boundary wall was unusually made of gabions, which are welded cages filled with rocks that are typically used to provide stability to road cuttings and other civil engineering projects. 

 

Gabions used for a boundary wall on Quarry Lane

 

Continuing back to The Green and Hillside and walking down the escarpment to Main Street, our final stop was at The Wells. A spring, which was at the heart of the earliest settlement at Anston, emerges from the junction of the Cadeby Formation and the underlying impermeable rocks of the PUCMF, before flowing down to meet Anston Brook. 

 

The limestone escarpment at Main Street

 

A Recce in Anston Stones Wood 2

 

The base of a dolomitic limestone crag

On the second leg of our recce in Anston Stones Wood, to prepare for the May 2023 field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, Carol and I headed north-west along the path that runs back towards Anston on the south side of Anston Brook. 

 

The railway bridge

 

We immediately came to the railway bridge, where the skew arch is built with Staffordshire Blue engineering bricks and which still forms an integral part of the still active minerals railway that runs along most of the length of the wood. Carrying on along the path that runs alongside the brook for much of its way, a few crags can be seen from a distance but they are not easily accessible. 

 

Anston Brook

 

For some distance, the only rock to be seen is in the streambed and stream banks, where small outcrops of the flaggy Rotherham Red variety of the Mexborough Rock can be seen. Over the years, especially after the heavy rain and flooding that Rotherham has experienced in the last few years, more of this has been exposed and there have been changes to the stream profile. 

 

An uprooted tree

 

At one point on the path, a large tree had been uprooted, which had disrupted and blocked the path, necessitating a short diversion up what turned out to be quite a slippery slope, after the most recent period of heavy rain. 

 

A large slipped block

 

Although very often covered in very thick vegetation, many large blocks have slipped down the hillside due to the process known as cambering, following the erosion of the gorge and undermining of the hard limestone by fast flowing water from a melting ice sheet to the west during the Quaternary Period.

 

Crags on the south side of the gorge

The Anston Stones Geological Trail did not include the crags that run along the south side of the gorge because, as a Biological SSSI, English Nature preferred that the trail should follow the principal paths on the north side and not encourage general exploration of the areas off the footpaths; however, various geological groups and societies know that these have considerable interest and access to these is not difficult. 

 

A view along the base of the crags

 

The Wetherby Member of the Cadeby Formation is exposed here and the thinly bedded limestone that forms the base of the crags has been differentially eroded to leave a distinct overhang. All along the rock face, there are signs of the development of flowstone and in one place a detached block is joined to the bedrock by a stalactitic growth. 

 

A fallen block with stalactitic growth

 

Returning to the path, we continued for a short distance before following the steps down to the stone bridge, which took us back to the north side of the brook. Just downstream of the bridge, the form of the south bank of the brook has changed considerably, with the roots of the trees now being clearly visible where the soil around it has been washed away. 

 

An eroded stream bank

 

Crossing the bridge and continuing along the path under the railway line, the brook flows through a deep and narrow channel that has been cut into the bedrock and soon disappeared from view as we ascended the path.

 

Reef limestone

Carrying on past more heavily overgrown slipped blocks, we eventually came to another example of a byozoan reef, where its gnarled formless appearance contrasts with the well bedded limestone that we had just seen and also with the massive limestone a little bit further along - the last rock outcrop that we saw on our way back to the car park. 

 

Well bedded massive limestone

A Recce in Anston Stones Wood 1

 

A fault in The Cut

My day out to Honley, as with my trip to Dewsbury the year before, had given me another good insight into the West Yorkshire textile industry, which I had previously mainly associated with the enormous mills such as Salts Mill in Shipley and Dean Clough in Halifax and I made a mental note to further explore the Heavy Woollen District in the near future. 

 

The Ordnance Survey map of Anston

 

For my next trip, however, I returned to the very familiar ground of Anston Stones Wood in Rotherham - to undertake a recce for the Sheffield U3A Geology Group June 2023 field trip along with Carol, a new member of the group who had volunteered to do the ‘administration’. 

 

The geology of Anston

 

Having surveyed Anston Stones Wood for the South Yorkshire RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) Group and in detail for Rotherham MBC 25 years previously, as well as leading walks and visiting many other times for my own pleasure, I had already identified most of the points of geological interest. 

 

The Anston Parish Council car park

 

Knowing that it wouldn’t take more than 2 hours to look at these, I planned to spend the afternoon exploring the old quarries and the North Anston Conservation Area and we therefore started our walk at the Anston Parish Council car park.

 

An embankment built with granite setts

Passing the cricket ground, we followed the public footpath to a point where another ill defined footpath drops down to a crossing of Anston Brook, where the embankment wall is built with reused granite road setts from various parts of the British Islands.

 

The Anston Stones Wood Geological Trail

 

This was included in the Anston Stones Wood Geological Trail, which was produced more than 20 years earlier, but I decided that these were not worth taking a diversion to see on the day and continued to the Little Stones – a scattering of gnarled rocks that form part of a Permian bryozoan reef, which are common in the lower part of the Cadeby Formation in South Yorkshire. 

 

An outcrop of dolomitic reef limestone at the Little Stones

 

Following the path that looks down over the crags to the railway line, we had a quick look at Dead Man’s Cave, a rock shelter that revealed flint stone tools used by hunters 12,000 years ago, together with bones of reindeer and hyena. 

 

Dead Man's Cave

 

Our next stop was The Cut, a spectacular gorge like feature where most of the surrounding trees and plants have grown from the numerous joints, fissures and occasional geological fault that can be seen along this section of the walk. 

 

The Cut

 

Continuing eastward along the path through the wood, we passed the site of an old lime kiln and although the botany and associated wildlife is of great interest in this SSSI, there is nothing of geological interest to see here and we carried on until we reached the steps.

 

The site of an old lime kiln

 

Anston Stones Wood is very popular place for walking and the paths are well maintained, but the steepness of slopes and the general terrain that we have to negotiate en route have to be taken into account, when organising field trips for the group - especially in the wetter months.

 

The steps down to Anston Brook

 

We stopped briefly to note that the brook now meanders through a much wider valley and, although we didn't go to investigate further on this occasion, thick layers of silt - deposited during times of flood - are exposed along its banks.

 

Anston Brook

 

After taking a good look at the information board next to the footbridge and allowing Carol to get her bearings, we then started off on our journey back to the Anston Parish Council car park, which would take us along the south side of Anston Brook.

An information board