Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/159

Rh part of the coal-field, to the Russell's Hall fault, to the greatest surface extension of the Rowley basalt, and to the general direction of the Dudley and Sedgley anticlinal.

The second line forms the axis of the Netherton anticlinal, runs nearly parallel to the Dudley Port Trough faults, to the outcrop of all the beds (both Coal-measures and Silurian), along the eastern margin of the district from West Bromwich to the Brown Hills, to the outcrop of the beds about Wyrley and Essington, to the western boundary fault north of Wolverhampton, and to the general direction of the northern part of the coal-field from Dudley northwards.

These two lines then point out to us the two directions alo which the disturbing forces acted that have produced the principal inclinations of the rocks, and the principal fractures that traverse them. It may at once be seen by inspection of the maps that all the lines of outcrop and all the faults of any importance either run parallel to one of these lines of bearing or parallel to the lines which are their resultants, or those which lie half-way between them. That is to say, all the features mentioned above strike—

All faults and all strikes that do not coincide very closely with one of those four lines of bearing are either small and unimportant, or occupy spaces that may be described as merely the connecting links where the one line of bearing is passing into the other.

Having thus sketched the outline of the framework of the district, let us commence our description of the lie of the beds at its southern portion.

The Permian rocks stretch in nearly horizontal and continuous sheets through the Clent Hills and the high ground of Hunnington and Romsley, Frankley Hill and Kitwell to Bartley Green. These beds dip with a very gentle inclination to the south. They are cut off both to the west and to the east by faults which afterwards form the boundary faults of the coal-field.

Towards the south these rocks have been largely denuded, especially in the middle portion south of Frankley Hill, where the surface of the ground dips more rapidly than the dip of the beds, and the rocks below the Permian are consequently exposed by the denudation. We find these rocks to consist of altered Llandovery sandstone and lower Wenlock shale and limestone, forming the broken anticlinal of the Lower Lickey, with a little unconformable deposit of Coal-measures on each side of it.

The Permian rocks and the beds below them soon, however, become concealed, both to the south-east, south, and south-west,