Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/75

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COAL-MEASURES.
57
Gornal Clayworks.
  FT. IN. FT. IN.
White clunch 1 6
Ironstone   0 3
White clunch 2 0
Dark clunch 1 0
Ironstone   0 3
  4 6 0 6
Total with clunch 5 0
Corbyns Hall.
  FT. IN. FT. IN.
Top ironstone   0 9
Clunch 5 6
Bottom stone   1 0
  5 6 1 0
Total with clunch 7 3
Dudley Woodside.
  FT. IN. FT. IN.
Ironstone   0 2 ½
Clunch, &c. 4 0
Ironstone   0 3 ½
  4 0 0 6 .
Total with clunch 4 6 .

Around Dudley and to the south-west of it, as also east as far as Oldbury, on the one side, and north to Ettingshall-lane on the other, the most usual name for this measure is White ironstone. Within these limits it is almost the lowest bed from which ironstone is gotten, and is that on which of late years the principal dependence has been placed. To the north-west, around Wednesbury and Bilston, and between Wolverhampton and Walsall, this measure is invariably called New mine stone, and in that district it is one of the uppermost ironstone measures, much richer and more important beds being there found below it.

21. (I. 8.) Intermediate measures containing the Pennystone ironstone, called also the Bluestone and the Cakes.—These beds are almost invariably dark clunch. They are called sometimes black clod and black ground. They contain sometimes throughout their mass, sometimes only in the lower portion of it, flat roundish nodules of ironstone, generally of a dark colour, and sometimes black, so as to be distinguishable from the New mine Whitestone above them, both in form and colour. The ironstone is sometimes called Blue ironstone, or the Cake ironstone,[1] as well as Pennystone. South and west of Dudley they rarely contain ironstone, and the whole mass scarcely ever exceeds 5 feet in thickness, being frequently altogether absent, the only exception I know being at the Graveyards near Lower Gornal, where they are described as "Pennystone measure, 18 feet." In the centre of the field between Dudley and Wednesbury ironstone is likewise often absent, as at Tipton Moat colliery, where we have only "dark ground 20 feet." South of that, however, towards Oldbury, ironstone is got from these bods under the name of Cakes or Bluestone; and northwards between Wolverhampton and Walsall, the Pennystone measures are mentioned in nearly all the sections, with a variable thickness of from 10 to 25 feet, sometimes generally, as occupying all the space


  1. There is a Cake ironstone worked immediately under the Whitestone at the pits round Cradley Heath, &c., which is probably the same as the Cakes east of Dudley.