The coal strikes regularly from this spot to the Foxyards, where it flattens very rapidly to a nearly horizontal position.[1] It was formerly worked here also in an open quarry. Hence, after bending a little into the hollow between the Wren's Nest and Hurst Hill, the crop of the Thick coal runs along Ettingshall lane nearly up to Monmore Green.
A little south of Catchem's Corner it is broken through by the branches of the Great Lanesfield fault, which traverse likewise the lower beds to tle west of it. Here, between the Ettingshall Park farm and Monmore Green, there is a very broken and disturbed district of Coal-measures. It appears that a rude anticlinal curve runs north from Hurst Hill by Ettingshall Park farm, the Parkfield furnace, and the Rough Hills colliery. The New Mine. Fire-clay, and Bottom coals, after rising to the west, flatten, curve round, and dip again to the west; and a fault running north and south by the Wolverhampton furnaces, has a downcast to the west of about 150 feet, and brings in a good sized patch of the Thick coal in that direction, which dips north- west and west at an angle of 30° towards the red rock of the Permian formation. South of this, on the west side of the Parkfield colliery, the Coal-measures are completely smashed up by faults, and contorted in so violent a manner that, as J was informed by Mr. Smith of the Priory, one shaft passed through the Blue-flats ironstone three several times, first meeting it with the top bed uppermost, but dipping at a very high angle, then with the bottom part uppermost, also at a high angle, and then again with the top side uppermost and nearly horizontal, the beds being curved into the form of an S. It was quite impossible to represent on the very inefficient scale of the Ordnance map anything at all approaching to the complicated faults and contortions of this piece of ground; but a few of the principal have been drawn with a tolerable approach to accuracy. They show that the action of the disturbing forces did not end merely in producing the Silurian elevations lately described, but was continued into the Coal-measures to the northward, and may have extended still farther for an unknown distance, producing fractures and dislocations in rocks now buried under the Permian and New red standstone rocks on the north-west.
Returning now to the south of Dudley, the outcrop of the Thick coal may be traced by the old workings along the south-west side of the town up to Shaver's End and Russell's Hall. It dips at a gentle angle to the south-west, not exceeding in any case 20°, and rarely so much as 10°, and as the ground likewise slopes rapidly in that direction, the Thick coal does not at first acquire any great depth, and its outcrop is deeply waved and indented by the valleys and hollows of the surface.
Thus the little valley north of Russell's Hall completely cuts down through the Thick coal into the lower measures. As the ground on the opposite side of the valley, however, called Dipdale Bank, rises to 8 sufficient height, it again brought in a large patch of Thick coal that extended nearly up to Gornal, where the ground slopes the other way. This piece of Thick coal being in no place more than 20 yards deep, has long been worked out.
- ↑ At the Foxyards a ground bailiff informed me that the Thick coal there was not the same as the Thick coal just mentioned, his only reason being that a parting of shale was a foot thicker in one place than in the other; he said there must be a fault between them on that account!
