Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/62

44 Other shafts have been worked and Thick coal gotten south of Titford reservoir, but it all seems very subject to be more or less deteriorated by interstratified layers and irregular beds and cakes of sandstone. At Messrs. Harper and Moore's pits, at Causeway Green, the Brooch coal was found with a thickness of 2 feet 3 inches, and the Thick coal was found below at a depth of about 170 yards (510 feet) from the surface, lying regularly and horizontally with the following as its general section, as given me by Mr. Green, on the spot.

In one shaft, however, the coal was found to be separated into two by a great cake of sandstone, 60 feet thick, the section being—

The whole of the coal also, even where it was not separated by large beds of sandstone, was flecked, and veined with it in all directions, little seams of white sandstone, from a quarter of an inch to two or three inches in thickness, occurring here and there throughout the coal. In some places, too, in the gate-roads, a more considerable body of sandstone might be seen either interposed between two coals, or taking the place of one or other of them for a certain distance.

There was little or no mingling, or kneading together, of the two substances in the same mass, but merely a minute interposition of the two, the sandstone even in the thinnest layers being often clear white quartzose sand, while the coal was clear brilliant black, with apparently even less earthy admixture than usual. The deterioration in the commercial value of the coal was not its inferior quality as coal, but the difficulty of getting large coals free from these layers of sandstone,