Page:VCH Herefordshire 1.djvu/58

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A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE was constructed many trilobites were obtained, but now they are much less frequently recorded from the neighbourhood. The Lower Ludlow Shales closely resemble their equivalents in the Ludlow-Huntington district. Limestone-nodules occur here and there in the lower portion, and flaggy beds — the ' Pendles ' of the Ludlow-Huntington district — in the upper ; but except in lanes the beds are not often seen. On the western slope of Eastnor Hill they were once worked for brick-making ; but both this section and the one by the roadside to the south of Eastnor village that yielded many fossils are quite overgrown. Beds, about the middle of the subdivision, are seen between Brock Hill and Colwall Copse. The Aymestrey Limestone is about the same thickness as in Shropshire, but less pure, and instead of Conchidium Knighti being the characteristic fossil its place is taken by Sieberella galeataJ^^ Being harder than the shales with which it is interstratified this limestone forms hillocks, which, owing to the flexuring the beds have undergone, are of various shapes, and very irregularly distributed. At the present time the best and most fossiliferous section is that by the roadside at Chance's Pitch, to the north of Netherton, where — as at Evendine, in the same neighbourhood — Leptaena depressa is common. The beds are well developed in the Cradley district at Hale's End. Wilsonia Wilsoni is very common in this section along a horizon in the shales which immediately overlie the Aymestrey Limestone, and which Phillips called ' Passage-Beds.' The Upper Ludlow Shales occupy a considerable area to the west of Ledbury. Although essentially a shale-formation the deposit becomes in- creasingly arenaceous and of a littoral facies as it is traced upwards into the Temeside Stage. There are many sections, particularly in the lanes which traverse the usually steep hill-sides which mark the junction of the Silurian and Old Red Systems, as near Frith Farm, Combe Hill, Barton Court, and in the Cradley district at Hale's End, where the complete succession from the Lower Ludlow to the Old Red has been observed. In the Malvern district the Temeside Beds much resemble their equiva- lents in the district between Ludlow and Huntington. The Downton Castle Sandstone appears to vary in thickness from lo to lOO ft., and the overlying Temeside Shales are also subject to much variation. The beds can be studied at the same locaUties as the Upper Ludlow Shales, but of course not necessarily in their entirety. The two best sections, however, are those at Ledbury — in the cutting leading to the tunnel — and at Brock Hill about half-a-mile to the north of Colwall Station. In the cutting at Ledbury many fish-remains have been found from time to time. Symonds pubHshed a detailed account of the strata exposed when the railway-cutting was made in 1860.*^ He assigned a thickness of 9 ft. to the Downton Sandstone, and of 272 ft. to the Ledbury Shales. The latter division comprises grey, red, and purple marls, and bands of grit, abounding in fish-remains at certain horizons, and the Httle brachiopod Lingula. The remains of fish belonged chiefly to the genus Auchenaspis.^^ " SymonAs,' Old Stones' (1884), p. 75. " Quart Journ. Geol. Soc. xvi (i860), p. 193 ; Edtn. Neto Phi. Joum. 1859, p. 232. " Trans. Woolhope Nat. F. C. 1883 (1890), pp. 17-18 ; ibid. 1884 (1890), pp. 136-8 ; ibid. 1895-7 (1898), pp. 3i°-i3- 14