GEOLOGY 



were of brief duration and of sparse recurrence, for the series consists 

 essentially of clays, shales, muds and sandstones of a united thickness of 

 many hundreds of feet. Occasionally the quantity of vegetable matter 

 floated down was in excess of any other material, and a mass of decaying 

 vegetable debris accumulated, to be ultimately converted into a seam of 

 coal, or it may be the carbonaceous matter collected in swamps lying at 

 or near sea level. 



The Pendleside Series occurs in two areas to the east and west of 

 Leek, being brought into this position by two major folds separated by the 

 trough enclosing the Coal-measures of the Cheadle and Shaffalong Coal- 

 fields with their enveloping Millstone Grits. The major folds are made 

 up of minor convolutions, frequently of great complexity, of which a 

 striking illustration is afforded by a section in Badgers Clough near Pye- 

 Clough. The extensive quarries on the anticline of Gun Hill, west 

 of Meerbrook, also forcibly illustrate, in the bent and shattered Pendleside 

 grits and shales, the violent nature of the disturbances and the amount of 

 compression the strata have undergone ; nor is this to be wondered at, 

 seeing that these sections lie well within the influence of the Great 

 Pennine uplift the dominant structural feature of mid-England. 



With the exception of deep dingles or gorges like those of the Dane 

 Valley system and Churnet Valley the scenery is tame, consisting for the 

 most part of open grassy moorland. This is due chiefly to the preponderance 

 of soft shales, but also in part to the frequent low inclination of the strata. 

 Whenever ridges such as Catsedge, Gun Hill and Morridge relieve this 

 monotony they are found to be composed of sandstone or grit, of which 

 the harder and more siliceous varieties are known as Crowstones, when 

 they are extensively quarried for rough road metal. Coal smuts, thin seams 

 of coal with fireclays, occasionally underlie these grits, and were formerly 

 worked to a limited extent. 



Fossils are comparatively rare and poorly preserved. They occur 

 in certain restricted bands in the shales, but are more abundant and better 

 preserved in some thin layers and nodules (bullions) of dark earthy lime- 

 stones clearly exposed in the banks of the Dane south of Wincle. They 

 include several species of Gonia fifes (Glyphioceras), Posidonomya Becheri, 

 Pterinopecten papyraceus, Posidoniella /avis, fossils Messrs. Hind and Howe 

 find characterizing a similar set of strata above the Mountain Limestone 

 in adjacent counties, especially on Pendle Hill (Lancashire), from which 

 the series derives its name. 



The river system which transported the sediments of the Pendleside 

 Series is considered by Dr. Hind to have flowed from the east and north- 

 east. He observes the series to be thickest over Lancashire, where the 

 succeeding Millstone Grits are also at their maximum development, 

 while from this centre the beds thin out in all directions ; thus North 

 Staffordshire lay towards the southern margin, South Staffordshire wholly 

 beyond it. 



These strata have for long been regarded as the southern equivalent 

 of the thick bands of white limestone and interbedded shales of Yoredale, 



