Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/155

Rh shaft are delineated to scale the headings or gateways that were driven in that direction, with the jackey pits and borings that were put up and down, together with a small ground plan both of the surface and the underground operations.

The following is a succinct account of these operations. In sinking the shaft they went down for 800 feet, through red standstones and other rocks certainly belonging to the Permian series. Below these, or at 804 feet from the surface of the ground, they entered the Coal-measures, and the following beds were passed through:—

No. 12, the nine-foot coal, was recognised ns the bottom part (Slipper, and Sawyer, and Benches) of the Thick coal, with the Gubbinstone and Table batt thinner than usual below it. No. 15 was said to have been afterwards traced into the Sulphur coal; but if No. 16 was rightly identified as the "White ironstone ground," this could not have been the case, as the Sulphur coal lies below the White (or New Mine) ironstone, and therefore No. 15 must have been the Heathen coal.

In examining the engraved Vertical Section. Sheet 17, No. 17, the reader must bear in mind, that while the measurements and position of the beds, as found in the pits, headings, and actual explorations are certainly accurate, the lines connecting these parts may not be exact representations of nature. They are probably only approximations to the truth, especially the shapes and positions of the coals to the west of the shaft, and the line marked "general boundary of the rock fault" on the east.

A "heading" was then driven in No. 12 for about 50 yards to the south-south-east, when the coal was found to thin out by the descent of its roof and come to nothing. A second heading was then driven 140 yards to the east-south-east, through Coal-measures lying in a very irregular condition, and at the end of that heading a bore hole was driven upwards, which at 12 or 15 feet above the heading passed through a three-foot coal, and was continued through dark clunch, for a total height of 100 feet, up into the "red rock." A third heading was then driven nearly parallel to this for about 35 yards, and at the end