GEOLOGY The Keuper Basement Beds, or, as they are sometimes called, Lower Keuper Sandstones, are typically developed in the western portion of the county where they conformably surmount the Upper Mottled Sandstone. Owing to the general presence of a hard conglomerate or occasionally a breccia at the base they overlook the inferior sub-division in the form of well-marked scarps particularly well exhibited to the west of Wolver- hampton between Tettenhall and Shifnall and in the ridges west of Eccleshall. But it is at Alton where denudation has most successfully picked out these harder strata and fashioned a combination of escarpment, rocky cliff and deep ravine unrivalled by any other Triassic area. In the eastern part of South Staffordshire and generally in North Staffordshire the basal conglomerate and breccia are absent and the Keuper Waterstones rest with apparent conformity or apparent discordance on the ' Pebble Beds.' In most places the basement beds are succeeded by even bedded red and white sandstones with interstratified layers of red and grey marl. Toward the summit the marl partings become more numerous and thicker with a consequent thinning of the intercalated sandstones, and so gradually pass into the Waterstones, so called from the thin sandstones possessing a fancied resemblance to watered silk and not to their affording a good water-bearing stratum as is sometimes stated. The red and white sandstones overlying the basement beds yield an excellent building stone extensively quarried around Wolverhampton, Rugeley and south of Cheadle. At Hollington and Stanton the stone is of exceptional quality, yielding large blocks sent to many parts of the kingdom. It has been, and still remains, a favourite stone for ecclesiastical architecture, country mansions and the larger buildings of many of the midland cities. Alton Towers is built of a freestone of Lower Keuper age obtained close at hand. The Lower Keuper Sandstones and building stones yield a few fossils of which remains of plants, poorly preserved, are not infrequent, but the most interesting are the rare remains of the gigantic Amphibian belong- ing to the sub-order Labyrinthodontia. The impressions of the hand-like feet chirosaurus (C heir other mm) of this animal have been met with on the surface of slabs of sandstones in many quarries, notably at Hollington, but the finest remains, consist- ing of a nearly complete skull, 9 inches long and 6 inches wide, were obtained in the quarries at Stanton. 1 Throughout the Lower Keuper, but also occasionally in the Bunter, the cementing material frequently consists of barium sulphate standing out in relief on the weathered surfaces as star-like forms or else leached out and redeposited as small veins filling joints. Copper-ore, consisting of the blue and green carbonates, is occasionally present and has been worked at Bearstone. Keuper Marls. Nearly the whole of the central and low-lying portions of the county are occupied by this sub-division. Made up 1 John Ward, 'On the Occurrence of Labyrinthodont Remains in the Keuper Sandstone of Stanton,' Tram. North Staff. Field Club (1900). 23
