Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/27

Rh In the Clent Hills the breccia has a red marly base, and is chiefly made up of large and small angular fragments of a dull red felstone porphyry, often much decomposed, and splitting, when struck with the hammer, along concealed joints, so as to expose no fresh fracture; of fragments of greenstone; of one or two kinds of sandstone; "with several fragments of a porcelanic-looking slaty rock, like some of those west of the Stiperstones. Near St. Kenelm's chapel this breccia passes down into 1, red marl, with small brecciated fragments at the top; 2, red standstone; 3, red marl; 4, calcareous sandy rock."

On Romsley Hill, going down into Hunnington, just below the trappean breccia, was found a dull brown sandstone, with a band of calcareous concretionary sandstone. Near a place called Newtown, about a mile to the east of that, are quarries where a similar concretionary calcareous sandstone (a regular cornstone) has even recently been burnt for lime. In going down the brooks from this point to Twylands and Cooks Woods, we get numerous alternations of brown, or brownish grey, or purple, or pale salmon-coloured sandstones, sometimes thick-bedded, sometimes flaggy, with beds of marl, either dark purple with light-coloured spots or blood-red. Many of the sandstones are calcareous and concretionary, and might be mistaken for some of the cornstones of the Old red. A dark purple sandstone, with minute white specks, is a characteristic bed. All these beds are apparently horizontal, being successively exposed only by the rapid fall of the ground; and near the bottom of the slope the blueish grey sandstones and shales of the coal-measures appear from underneath them, likewise in a horizontal position.

The neighbourhood of West Bromwich.—In the cutting of the Birmingham and Dudley railway, south of Sandwell Park, were seen rising to the west, from under a thick mass of quartzose conglomerate, a series of brown and pale sandstones, with merely a few small and slightly angular pebbles. In these beds are masses, believed to be in situ, of a singular calcareous conglomerate that is better shown in other places. Under them, we have other pale sandstones alternating with bright red marls, all rising to the westward at an angle of about 10°. We have an account of a boring made hereabouts near "The Ruck of Stones," some years ago, by Mr. J. W. Unett (see Vertical Sections, sheet 18. No. 27), consisting entirely of alternations of red, brown, and grey sandstones of various degrees of hardness, with many beds of red marl, mottled clunch, and other similar materials, all evidently belonging to the formation we are now describing. The depth of the boring was 221 yards 1 foot, or 664 feet.

Nearly a mile west of this, and therefore commencing in much lower beds than are seen in the railway cutting, we have several deep coal pits, the most remarkable of which are those formerly sunk by Messrs. Davis at Bullocks farm, near Spon-lane (sec Vertical Sections, sheet 18. No. 28). In these pits they passed