ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 



The Quartzose Conglomerate at Caldon Low, 

 Staffordshire. 



By J. Wilfrid Jackson, F.G.S., and J. Kaye Charleswoeth, 



M.Sc, Ph.D. 



TN the Geological Magazine for February, 1919 (pp. 59-64), one of 

 -^ the present writers, in collaboration with W. E. Alkins, described 

 an exposure of a quartzose conglomerate on the north-west flank of 

 Caldon Low. The conclusions arrived at in that paper were 

 adversely criticized by F. Barke, Wheelton Hind, and A. Scott in 

 a, later paper in the same Magazine.^ These writers maintain that 

 the conglomerate was not a contemporaneous deposit, but an 

 assemblage of materials, analogous to that seen in the Weaver 

 Sand-pits, south of the Ribden Mine, about one and a quarter miles 

 away, which had filled up a solution cavitj/ in the limestone and had 

 become consolidated by the percolation of calcareous matter. 



The present paper is written with the object of refuting the 

 statements made by these writers as to the mode of origin and the 

 age of the conglomerate. During the last twelve months quarrying 

 operations have revealed tectonic features which clearly prove that 

 the quartzose conglomerate is a true " intra-formational con- 

 glomerate ", as suggested in the original paper.^ 



To clear the ground it will be convenient to give a short description 

 of the Weaver Sand-pits. 



The Weaver Sand-pits. — The deposits in these pits consist chiefly 

 of incoherent sands, clays, and pebbles, and closely resemble those 

 of the series of pockets in the limestone of the high ground of Derby- 

 shire from Parsley Hay to Wirks worth. The principal pit in the 

 Weaver series, and the one now working, difiers from the adjacent 

 ones and from the Derbyshire pits in containing blocks of hard 

 sandstone, with and without pebbles, which are obviously residual 

 Bunter beds. These blocks are erroneously regarded by 

 Messrs. Barke, Hind, and Scott as due to the consolidation of part of 

 the contents of this pit.^ They further state that they are similar 

 lithologically to the infilling at Caldon Low. The remains of a similar 

 sand-pit are still to be seen close to the road to Cauldon village, 

 1 mile N.N.W. of the Weaver pits, and a quarter of a mile S.W. of the 

 quartzose conglomerate under discussion. In this pit a block of 

 black Pendleside shale, containing Posidoniella minor, was found by 

 J. Allen Howe, and duly recorded in his paper, " Notes on the Pockets 

 of Sand and Clay in the Limestone of Derbyshire and Staffordshire." * 



1 Geol. Mag., Vol. LVII, 1920, p. 76. 



- Ibid., Vol. LVI, 1919, pp. 59-64. 



^ Ibid., Vol. LVII, 1920, p. 81. 



* Trans. North Staffs Field Club, vol. xxxi, 1897, p. 144. 



