Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/21

Rh equivalents of the sandstones of the Peckforton hills and of Warwick, which contain Labyrinthodon remains, and in the district surrounding the South Statfordshire Coal-field fossil plants were found in them near Bromsgrove, and a small ganoid homocerque fish, described by Sir Philip Egerton under the name of Dipteronotus cyphis.

"Frequently the beds are rippled or current marked, and also traversed by sun cracks, showing that some of them were alternatcly covered by water and exposed to the air.

"This subdivision occurs in great force round Bromegrove and in the country between Ombersley and Stourbridge. It lies in the form of a synclinal curve, widening to the south, where it is overlaid by a broad tract of red mar]. The sandstone series is here probably from 200 to 300 feet thick. It also occurs on Penn Hill and Oreton Hill as a faulted outher, and farther north it ranges from Whitwick to Penkridge, expanding in places to a width of several miles. Its base partly consists of calcareous breccia and conglomerate, and its greatest thickness is probably about 300 feet.

"On the east of the Coal-field equivalent strata of the same general type (occasionally interrupted by faults) run from the Caradoc sandstone of the Lickey Hills, by Birmingham, to the north of Sutton Coldfield, and from the border of the Coal-field at Cannock Chase to the Trent near Lichfield.

"BUNTER—The Upper Red and Mottled Sandstone.—The Upper Red and Mottled sandstone round the South Staffordshire Coal-field invariably succeeds, in descending order, the strata described above. It varies in thickness from 400 to 500 feet, and generally consists of fine bright red sand, sometimes streaked and mottled with yellow. These sands are often false bedded, but they never contain pebbles. On the east side of the Coal-field this sub-formation ranges from the neighbourhood of Harborne by Birmingham to Sutton Coldfield, and again from the southern part of Cannock Chase eastward to Shenstone. On the west the beds strike in a narrow strip from the Birmingham and Gloucester railway to Hagley, and elsewhere, interruptedly and broken by faults, from the neighbourhood of Stone in Worcestershire to Tettenhall near Wolverhampton. A patch about 5 miles in length also occurs west of Cannock, between Cross Green and Manstey Wood. Good sections may be seen in a cutting of the Birmingham and Gloucester railway, south of Blackwell station, in the new cemetery at Birmingham, in the road cuttings about Tettenhall and Compton near Wolverhampton and at other places marked by arrows on the map.

"The Conglomerates or Pebble Beds.—The pebble or conglomerate beds lie below the Upper Red and Mottled sandstone. 'They vary in thickness from 300 to 500 feet, and in our district are probably thickest south of the Lickey Hills and in Cannock Chase, north of Cannock. They range from a fault near Blackwell station south of the Lickey, to Hagley, lying here directly on the Permian strata, without the intervention of the Lower