CHAPTER VI.
Description of the Rocks—continued.
Detailed Description of the Coal-measures.
1. Beds above the Upper Sulphur coal, including the Halesowen sandstones and the Red Coal-measure clays.
Wherever the bed known as the Upper Sulphur coal is mentioned in the pit sections, it is found to lie about 300 feet above the Thick coal, and about half that distance above the Two-foot or Little coal. The Upper Sulphur coal is mentioned in most of the pit sections in the latitude of Dudley, from Great Bridge to Kingswinford.
At the Trough pits near Burnt Tree it is 343 feet above the Thick coal, but this thickness diminishes as we come south to about 290 at Corbyn's Hall and Wordesley Bank.
Farther south still, towards Corngreaves and the Hawne the Upper Sulphur coal seems to disappear, but the Two-foot continues, lying at a height of about 150 feet over the Thick coal at Congreaves, at the Old Lion colliery, and at a pit a little north of the Sleek Hillock formerly worked by Mr. Mills.
We may conclude, therefore, that the Two-foot coal will retain this position over all the southern portion of the field, and that the place of the Upper Sulphur coal (whether it be present or absent) will never exceed a height of about 300 feet above the top of the Thick coal.
1a. Halesowen Sandstones.—There are beds, however, in which at least one coal occurs, which are much above this height over the Thick coal. A little bed of coal is to be seen in a small ravine nearly due east of Ham House near Old Swinford, in the brooks running down from Lutley to Lutley Mill, in the brooks in Uffmoor Wood, and Mr. Mathews, of the Leasowes, informed me that he came upon a similar little coal in some excavations in the Leasowes demesne. Mr. Richards also formerly sank at Wassel Grove, and passed through two little coals, one of four inches and the other eighteen inches thick. Now the rocks associated with these little coals are principally olive green, brownish, and yellowish sandstones, sometimes pebbly or conglomeritic; and this sandstone group stretches all across the southern portion of the coal-field by Prescott and Wollescote and Careless Green. Wassel Grove. Upper and Lower Lutley. Halesowen, and the Leasowes, and caps the hills of High Haden. Homer Hill, and Cradley Park.
This sandstone group seems to have a thickness of not less than 200 or 300 feet, and from underneath it there appear red and green and mottled clays likewise of considerable thickness, as may be seen by the spoil banks of the pits on the north side of Gosty Hill, and thence at various places north of those just mentioned to Cradley and the Lye Waste and Hay Green.
The little coal or coals which are to be seen high up in the sandstone group have sometimes been spoken of as if they were the representative of the Upper Sulphur, or the Two-foot, or even the Brooch coals. It may be shown by the following facts that this cannot be the case, and that the coal of Wassel Grove, and the other places mentioned above, is far higher above the Thick coal than even the Upper Sulphur coal.
At Mr. Attwood's colliery at Hawn the depth of the shaft to the bottom of the Thick coal is 255 yards = 765 feet; but as the beds dip south at the rate of 3 inches in a yard, and they have driven a "gate-road " in that direction 450 yards without meeting any fault or change of dip, the end of the gate-road must be 112 feet below the bottom of the
