Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/50

32 great request in the district for parlour fires. It varies in thickness from 2} to 6 feet, the mean and by far the most usual thickness being about 4 feet. It is quite constant over the whole coal-field, wherever the beds occur in which it ought to be found.

7 and 8. (I.1.) Brooch binds ironstone measures and Herring coal.— These beds are almost entirely confined to one portion of the district, that, namely, on the west and south of Dudley. The Brooch binds are shales averaging about 7 feet in thickness (Vertical Sections, sheet 26. No. 49). In some places, as at Corbyns Hall, and Bromley Hall near Kingswinford, as also in the Corngreaves district, they contain ironstone nodules, which sometimes, but not always, are worth getting. About Brierly Hill and at Wordesley Bank Colliery they thicken out to upwards of 20 feet, and contain good ironstone. The Herring coal is generally about 18 'inches thick, and not worth getting; it is, however, very persistent in the district now described, and as we go towards High Haden we find other small coals, one of which is a cannel coal, coming in just below the Herring. Neither of these measures are mentioned in the section of the Oak-farm pit, nor in the borings at Holbeche Mill near Himley, on the west side of Dudley, nor do they occur at all on the east side of Dudley, except in one part of Tividale, where, in the record of an old sinking in 1797, given in Plott's History of Staffordshire. I find mentioned the following beds:-—

of which b and c must be the beds we are speaking of.

9. (I. 2.) The Pins and Pennyearth ironstone measures.—These take their names from the form of the ironstone nodules which they contain, the Pins being small cylindrical nodules, and the Pennyearth small round flattish nodules, like penny pieces. 'These measures have a wider spread than those last mentioned, since they are noted in sections east of Dudley, not only at Tividale but at Burnt-tree and Tipton, as also at Oldbury, in which last two places a small coal called Pennycoal, about a foot thick, is sometimes found in them. Their thickness there is from 7 to 20 feet. I do not know how far these beds may have extended and been formerly worked for ironstone in the central portion of the coal-field between Dudley and Bilston, but they are now principally, if not solely, gotten in its south-western portion between Dudley and Stourbridge, especially in the district around Corbyn's Hall and Brierley Hill, where they sometimes together attain a thickness of 27 feet; and at Wordesley Bank Colliery (Vertical Sections, sheet 18, No. 35) the Pins are 4 feet, and the Pennyearth 27 feet thick. They always occur also in the Corngreaves district, where they vary in thickness from 6 feet to 17 feet. It appears that the two measures not always distinctly recognizable, as sometimes one sometimes the other only is mentioned; and moreover, that the presence of good ironstone is uncertain, so that in some instances where the measures exist they are not worth working, and therefore but little noticed. They are not mentioned at all in the sections of Holbeche Mill and the Oak-farm on the one side, nor at