Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/167

Rh ‹›directions, and at Turner's Hill, west of Lower Gornal, a patch of the Silurian with a band of Aymestry limestone again makes its appearance from under them. There is, however, but one small quarry in it, and the exact details of the structure of the country just hereabouts are very obscure.

Coal, supposed to be part of the Thick coal, has been found and partially worked in the valley, which runs from the west side of Sedgley down by Cotwall End. It was, however, much broken and disturbed, but was said to dip generally to the west, and frequently at very high angles.

At Sedgley Hall farm a trial pit was sunk in 1828, in which they passed through 120 feet of "red croprash rock and marl," under which were 200 feet of Coal-measures, and then the Thick coal dipping west at an angle of 12°. As there is no sign of the Thick coal cropping out between this spot and the Silurian ridge, there must be a fault between, which makes it probable that a fault forms the west boundary of the whole of the Sedgley Silurian district.

Outcrop of the Coals round the Dudley and Sedgley anticlinal.— We will now briefly trace the outcrop of the coals round this singularly dislocated district of elevation. Beginning on the south of the town of Dudley, the Thick coal and the beds just above and below it crop regularly out, dipping south at an angle of about 25°. The crop of the Thick coal may be traced very easily, partly by the old, partly by the present workings across Dixon's Green, and a little north-west of the Freebodies to Burnt Tree, when it dips east at 30°, and thence curving round the Silurian tract of the Castle Hill to the angle between it and the Wren's Nest. Along the north-east flank of the Wren's Nest the Thick coal is nearly vertical, and was worked in an open quarry in the years 1849 and 1850. As a good illustration of the very careless and ignorant manner in which the South Staffordshire coal-field has been worked. I will describe the way, in which this vertical piece of coal was discovered. A little to the east of it the Thick coal had been worked continuously in a nearly horizontal position at a depth of about 70 or 80 yards, as at A. Fig. 20. The workings were continued towards the Wren's Nest till the coal ended against a fault or supposed fault, or at all events, some "troubled ground." A shaft. B. Fig. 20, was then sunk from the surface, about 30 or 40 yards to the west of this supposed fault, in search of the coal. No notice could have been taken, in sinking this shaft, of the angle at which the beds inclined, and after being continued for more than 70 yards it was abandoned. In fact it must have been sunk the whole distance nearly along the same bed in which it was begun, the beds being nearly vertical, but that was not observed, or not understood, neither were the beds below the Thick coal recognized. The lease of the land was on the point of being given up by the gentlemen who held it, when, a few feet of rubbish being accidentally removed from the surface at a particular spot, the end of the Thick coal was uncovered and of course worked. Even then, however, the ground bailiff, whom I met on the spot, and who had charge of all the mining operations, seemed scarcely to understand that this was merely a piece of the Thick coal bent up into a nearly vertical position, and broken off the horizontal portion below, as shown in diagram. Fig. 20.



These men have a fixed idea that coal grows, that it is still growing and forming in the earth, and that not only the coals and ironstones grow, but that the faults grow likewise; it is not possible, therefore, that they can have any clear ideas of their work, or be able to adapt it to any unusual circumstances.