Stockingford Shales - 



Hartshill Quartzite 



GEOLOGY 



Merevale Shales. 



Oldbury Shales. 



Purley Shales. 



Camp Hill Quartzite with Hyolite Limestone. 



Tuttle Hill Quartzite. 



Park Hill Quartzite. 



The Hartshill Quartzite consists of well bedded highly siliceous 

 sandstones, usually of a pale pinkish colour ; the rock is very hard, and 

 according to Mr. Strahan 1 a prepared cubic inch crushes at a pressure 

 of 24,000 Ib. The beds vary in thickness from a few inches to four or 

 five feet. Frequent thin seams of shales occur ; a double band marks 

 the summit of the Park Hill Quartzite, and another separates the middle 

 and upper sub-divisions. ' Worm-burrows ' are the only fossils found 

 in the two lower sub-divisions, but the Camp Hill Quartzite has yielded 

 a small but interesting fauna. 



The Lower or Park Hill Quartzite is opened up in numerous large 

 quarries, the rock being extensively wrought for roadstone. The lowest 

 layers are best seen at the entrance to Mr. Abel's new quarry near Harts- 

 hill Grange. In this cutting ' the Caldecote tuffs rise in a low anticlinal 

 form, and are visibly overlain to the westwards by the basement bands 

 of the quartzite.' 2 At the entrance to Mr. Boon's quarry the quartzite 

 for some distance upwards from its base ' contains large rounded blocks 

 of Caldecote volcanic rocks, while the matrix is mainly composed of the 

 rounded wash of similar material.' s 



The Middle or Tuttle Hill Quartzites are being worked in only 

 two quarries, one at Tuttle Hill opposite the Midland Railway station 

 at Nuneaton, and another near Caldecote Windmill. The rocks resemble 

 those of the lower sub-division. 



The Upper or Camp Hill Quartzite is exposed in the Camp Hill 

 Grange quarry belonging to Messrs. Trye. The base of the sub- 

 division is formed by a shaly band some 50 feet thick, at the top of 

 which occurs a seam, 2 feet thick, of red-coloured hard and tough lime- 

 stone, the Hyolite Limestone, above which the sub-division is completed 

 by 50 feet of hard quartzose and glauconitic sandstone. 



The fossils of the Hyolite Limestone and its associated shales include 

 several species of Hyo/it&us, Orthotbeca, and Stenotheca, and the brachiopod 

 Kutorgina cingulata. This fauna corresponds in part to that of the Ole- 

 nellus-zone. of other regions ; and Professor Lapworth therefore considers 

 that the Camp Hill Quartzite is probably equivalent to the Comley 

 Sandstone of Shropshire and the Hollybush Sandstone of Malvern. 



The Stockingford Shales succeed to the uppermost beds of the 

 quartzite. Their outcrop attains its greatest width at Merevale, the 

 highest beds there coming to the surface from beneath the unconform- 

 able Coal Measures. They consist throughout of fine-grained shales and 

 mudstones. 



1 Geol. Mag. (1886), p. 544. * Lapworth, Pnc. Geol. Assoc. xv. (1898), 340. 



8 Lapworth, op. cit. p. 332. See also Strahan, Geol. Mag. (1886), p. 543. 



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