A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



able phenomena known as ' wash-outs.' A wash-out or ' dumb-fault ' is 

 discovered in working a coal seam by the sudden dying out of the coal 

 and its replacement by a mass of sandstone apparently pressed into it from 

 above. This sandstone may continue for many yards, but if the ' stone- 

 heading ' is continued far enough it may reach the other side of the 

 wash-out and enter the coal seam again. If the sandstone is traced in a 

 direction transverse to such a heading it is found to have the form of a 

 long, sometimes branching trough. The material filling this trough is 

 often false bedded and includes fragments of coal, bind, fossiliferous iron- 

 stone, etc., which have been brought from a distance. 



The occurrence of a wash-out in this district was first shown by 

 Lieut. G. E. Coke l in the ' Deep Hard ' Coal on the borders of the 

 county, but they have since been described by Mr. J. Shipman 3 as occur- 

 ring on two horizons in the Leen Valley workings. Such a wash-out in 

 the Newcastle Colliery affects the ' Top Hard ' coal and has a breadth 

 of 300 yards. It has been traced in a transverse direction for more than 

 a mile. In the Newstead Colliery a wash-out affects the ' Comb ' coal 

 and the strata above it. Its breadth varies from 50 to 250 yards, and 

 its depth is about 25 feet. It has been traced taking a winding but 

 generally N.E. or E.N.E. course for a distance of 3 miles, and has a 

 tributary joining it on the right hand side at the main bend. Its base 

 is uneven and rutted, and the channel deepens towards the N.E., the 

 upper end being probably the continuation of a wash-out formerly met 

 with in the Annesley Colliery. A third wash-out has been seen in the 

 ' Deep Soft ' coal at Wollaton, having a breadth of 1 5 yards and a depth 

 of 6 feet. In this case, as in that at the Newcastle Colliery, but in a more 

 marked degree, the wash-out is coincident with a downward roll of the 

 strata beneath, which was doubtless the original cause of the wash-out 

 taking the course it did. A wash-out can only be produced on a land 

 surface by a stream running on the level of the coal seam and wearing 

 away a furrow which is afterwards filled with the next succeeding kind 

 of deposit. It is an example of contemporaneous erosion. 



Another example of this kind of erosion on a far larger scale is that 

 of the Red Rock of Rotherham, which has also been met with in Notts. 

 This is a massive sandstone 200 ft. in thickness which lies so irregularly 

 on the earlier measures that it was thought at one time to be Permian. 

 The question of its age was however definitely settled by the occurrence 

 of a coal seam the ' Manor ' coal above it in the Shireoaks Colliery. 

 Its irregularity is therefore a mere accident of deposit. 



With these exceptions the whole of the Coal-Measures belong to a 

 single conformable series of deposits, of which the most constant as well 

 as the most easily recognized are the coal seams themselves. The follow- 

 ing is a list of all the coals that have received names in the county of 

 Nottingham, beginning with the highest. 



1 trans. Chester jwld and Mid. Count. Inst. of Engineers, vol. xvi. 1888. 

 1 Nott. Nat. Soc. Tram, for 1894. 



