Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/184

166 Its outcrop along the eastern flank of the Sedgley and Dudley anticlinal ridge has already been described (p. 149), and it has been shown how it is dislocated by the western branches of the Lanesfield fault, and that a detached piece was thrown in towards the Wolverhampton furnaces in consequence of other faults having a downthrow in that direction aided by a rude sort of anticlinal arch that occurs about Parkfield.

The outcrop then runs along the western side of Ettingshall Lane for some distance, and then turns across it and across the Wolverhampton and Bilston round toward Batchcroft and Priestfield. A small east-and-west fault, with a downthrow to the north, throws in another little detached piece towards Monmore Green. The outcrop runs thence very steadily about east by south to Darlaston, where it is broken by the Darlaston fault and partly deflected to the north by the rise of ground. Thence the outcrop runs south-east till it is broken and thrown forward to the east by the King's Hill fault, whence it runs south to the Lanesfield fault, which again throws it forward to the east. Thence it begins to run nearly south-west into the northern part of Wednesbury, "when it is cut through and thrown nearly half a mile to the east by the Coseley and Wednesbury fault. South of that fault it runs about south-south-west, and is deflected by the valley of the Wednesbury brook, south of which it meets the Bald's Hill fault. The outcrop is then thrown to the east more than a mile to Stone Cross, partly by the downthrow of the Bald's Hill fault, partly by the rise of ground, and partly perhaps by a flattening of the dip of the measures. From Stone Cross it strikes about south-south-west till cut by the extremity of the Tipton fault north-west of West Bromwich old church. This fault, however, is here very slight, so that the outcrop seems scarcely affected, but continues as far as the Hall End colliery. In this it meets with a fault running about north-east by north, which has a downthrow to the south-east. This would throw the outcrop still farther to the eastward, in which direction, however, everything is so covered by drift that its outcrop is not known. There then appears to be another fault ranging about north-east by east, having likewise a southerly downthrow, bringing in the red rock of the Permian formation, under which the Thick coal continues for some distance at a depth of 600 or 700 feet till it ends, either in a rock fault, an outcrop of the beds into the Permian rock, or against an upthrow fault. It is not improbable that the Thick coal terminates for a time, if not altogether, towards the east under the Permian rocks, in one or all three, of the methods alluded to above. From the south side of the Tipton fault, about two-thirds of a mile west of West Bromwich old church, a fault strikes off to the southward with a downthrow to the east, and runs thence through Oldbury to the Quinton. This will be described presently under the head of the Boundary faults.

The south-eastern part of the coal-field.—Between it and the Rowley Hills is the south-eastern portion of the district, in winch the beds appear to lie very regularly and horizontally, although the Thick and other coals are greatly injured by the quantity of sandstone interstratified with them, a3 before described. Such as they are, however, these beds appear to have been very little disturbed by fractures and dislocations, the debased representative of the Thick coal passing under the Rowley basalt on the one side and striking against the Boundary fault on the other at a depth of 400 or 500 feet, often thinning from 30 feet to 3 feet in all directions, and being frequently not worth the trouble of getting. South of Causeway Green and Cakemoor little or nothing