Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/90

72

At Monmore colliery, half a mile east of this, there was—

About Bentley the coals close together again with only a little batt between them, but make a total thickness of not more than 7 or 8 feet. This at the Birch Hills becomes 12 or 14 feet, with only 8 inches of batt; and it retains a thickness of 12 feet towards Bloxwich and Goscott.

For the space of a mile or so between the Birch Hills and Goscott this twelve-foot Bottom coal is called by the colliers the Four-yard or Thick coal, because it is thicker than any other coal thereabouts, and not with any reference to the true Thick or Ten-yard coal, of which most of them know very little, though it is worked within five miles of them.

The outcrop of the Bottom coal may be followed continuously from Bentley acrosacross [sic] the Great Bentley fault by Ryecroft to Coal Pool, where it was formerly cut into, and in October 1858 might be seen in a large open work running for about 50 yards on the east side of the brook north-east of Goscott Lodge.

This part of the outcrop was cut off to the northward by a fault having a downthrow to the north of about 10 yards, but the coal had been worked formerly up to Pelsall Heath. Just at the southern corner of Pelsall Heath this twelve-foot coal was known from old workings to separate into two coals of 5 feet and 7 feet. This separation was the consequence of the coming in of some beds of shale and sandstone, which rather rapidly increased towards the north till they attained a thickness of 40 or 50 feet. The Bottom coal, thus separated into two, was worked formerly for some distance along the outcrop north of Pelsall Heath, till it was dropped out of reach of the "old men" by downcast faults into that which may now be called the High Bridge trough. The corresponding upcast faults on the north side of this trough brought these coals again near the surface about the Brown Hills, and they were there gotten both by the "old men," and the men of the last and present generation. All the way along these outcrops of the coals, or wherever they came within a sufficiently slight depth of the surface to be easily worked, they received the name of the Shallow coal and the Deep coal (Vertical Sections, sheet 26, Nos. 41, 42, 43, and 46).