Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/67

Rh sandstone, the major axis of which ran nearly due north and south. It was 13 chains or 286 yards wide, and it had been already traced north and south through a space of about 400 yards without reaching its northern extremity. In driving a gate-road towards it in the lowest part of the the Thick coal, it was found that at the height of about 10 feet from the bottom of "the benches," sandstone came in, and formed the roof of the coal; and from that point the sandstone gradually descended, and cut out bed after bed of coal until it reached the bottom of the benches, and some portion of it even descended below the Thick coal, and cut out the upper Heathen coal. When I first visited this gate-road, it was supposed that this sandstone had cut out the whole, not only of the lower part, but also of the upper part of the Thick coal; and the ground bailiff and colliers assured Mr. Thompson that they had bored upwards for several yards, and found nothing but "rock." This, on the subsequent extension of the workings, was proved to be merely one of those falsehoods that these men so frequently assert to save themselves a little trouble. In 1851 the upper part of the Thick coal was found to extend some distance over the extreme point of the interposed sandstone, and there is very little doubt that the 9-foot coal passed through in the New Baremoor shaft, instead of thinning out in every direction, really thickens gradually towards the upper part of the Thick coal around it. What makes this more probable is, that in working from the Thick coal around, towards the shaft, the coal became hard and intractable, making it more difficult to get. It is probable that for this reason the ground bailiff or butty collier, at that time in charge, declared it thinned out, and was not worth following.

This mass of interposed sandstone was very fine grained, rather soft, slightly argillaceous, of a light, greenish white colour; not at all differing from the usual argillaceous sandstones of the neighbourhood, which pass under the name of "rock" or "rock binds." It was not only interstratified with the coal en masse, but at or near the junction of the two they each split up into many beds, that interlaced with the utmost regularity. Beds of sandstone, two or three feet thick, extended many yards into the coal, gradually thinning out and splitting up, so that hand specimens could be procured of alternations of bright coal and pale sandstone, each little bed being not more than one tenth of an inch in thickness. Similarly did small beds and thin laminæ of coal stretch into the mass of the sandstone; a few separate masses also, a foot or so in thickness, sometimes occurring suddenly, not as detached fragments, but as little independent beds in the sandstone. Of the alternation and interstratification of the two materials the following cut (Fig. 6) will give a good idea:—