A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



central England, owing to a broad belt of elevated land stretching across 

 what is now Britain, from Wales to the east coast, during the Upper 

 Carboniferous period. Without contesting in any way the general con- 

 clusion referred to above, it may be remarked that the evidence available 

 from deep borings tends to show that the proved absence of coal from cer- 

 tain parts of Northamptonshire admits of and requires another explanation, 

 and this may here be briefly discussed. Coal, or a near approach to it, 

 lignite, may be found in any of the stratified rocks of Northamptonshire, 

 in small pieces or larger patches, no doubt originally consisting of drift 

 wood. Morton records ' various diggings or borings for coal in the 

 county previous to 171 2 ; and an energetic attempt appears to have 

 been made at Kettering in 1766.' A more ambitious scheme was 

 formed in 1836, and a company commenced sinking a shaft at Kings- 

 thorpe near Northampton. This venture was made on the advice 

 of ' practical men,' and in opposition to the opinions of Wm. Smith 

 (' the father of English geology ') and Mr. Richardson (of the British 

 Museum).' ^30,000 was expended, and a depth of 967 feet reached 

 without either finding the Coal Measures or proving their absence. 

 An attempt was made to revive the scheme about 1854, and again in 

 1869, but nothing came of either. 



No accurate record of the strata passed through in making the 

 Kingsthorpe shaft was kept, and the only available figures as to the thick- 

 nesses of the various formations are certainly wrong somewhere. It will 

 suffice here to record that after passing through the Lower Lias they 

 apparently met with Red Sandstone 60 feet (or 80 feet ?), Red Marl 

 12 feet, Conglomerate 15 feet, and stopped at 967 feet, without 

 reaching the Old Land Surface ; but considering that the Conglom- 

 erate consisted chiefly of Carboniferous Limestone pebbles in a greenish 

 sandy matrix, as at Gayton, there can be no reasonable doubt of its 

 occurrence only a little below. 



The problem of finding coal in Northamptonshire involves a con- 

 sideration of several of the preceding sections and some of those which 

 follow, thus : — In the early part of the Carboniferous period the dis- 

 trict was mostly well under water and receiving marine deposits (cf 

 Gayton and Northampton), and since the whole of the Carboniferous 

 rocks were deposited in a gradually subsiding area, it seems more likely 

 than not that the Coal Measures, the uppermost division of the system, 

 did actually cover the whole or parts of the county, and that they, as in 

 the West of England and in Wales, rested directly upon Carboniferous 

 Limestone without the intervention of the Millstone Grit, or even in other 

 parts of the county upon Archsan rocks, as in certain districts of Leices- 

 tershire. If consideration be given to the great gap between the Car- 

 boniferous Limestone formation and the Keuper (see Table of Formations, 



* John Morton, The Natural Hiitory of Northamptonshire (17 12). 



* Northampton Mercury, Feb. 24th, 1766. 



* Wm. Brown, ' The Iron Ores of Northamptonshire,' Proc. of the South Wales 

 Institute of Engineers, vol. ii. p. 198. 



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