350 D. Jones — Coal-measures of the Brown Clee Hill 



district of Bewdley Forest in the list of productive coal-fields. That 

 it once was the site of a rich and productive coal-field there can be 

 no doubt, and this is testified by the remnant of productive Coal- 

 measures found at Harcott; but the main original deposit has been 

 removed by denudation, with the exception of that remnant and the 

 patches at Brown Clee and Cornbrook. The void was subsequently 

 filled up with Upper Coal-measures of the unproductive character 

 which we know to exist in the Bewdley district. 



Seeing that the Millstone Grit thickens to the south-west, as at 

 Cornbrook, and also the older Coal-measures, one is inclined to 

 believe that in this direction we are passing from the high ground 

 which forms the base of the Coal-measures at Coalbrookdale and in 

 South Staffordshire into lower ground capable of receiving the 

 Millstone Grit and a greater thickness of Coal-measures ; and this 

 being so, is very suggestive of the probable connexion at an earlier 

 period of these coal-fields with those further, south, as, for instance, 

 the Forest of Dean, where the deposits are of a similar character. 



In the neighbourhood of Cornbrook there are still considerable 

 quantities of coal remaining unwrought, and previous to the exten- 

 sion of railway commvmication it was a blessing of the highest 

 importance to the district that this Coal-field had escaped denudation. 



It may seem, perhaps, surprising that the greater portion of the 

 Cornbrook Coal-field is covered with Jew-stone, in some cases 

 150 feet thick, which has been poured out over the Coal-measures, 

 and so protected them from denudation. This igneous rock is of 

 considerable value as a paving- stone, and the nature of the Jew- 

 stone at Brown Clee and Cornbrook seems to be precisely the same. 

 They were probably contemporaneous ejections. I do not think it 

 probable that they were injected between the strata of the Coal- 

 measures in the same way as we find in South Staffordshire, where 

 sheets of Basalt take the place of acres of coal. The Titterstone 

 Clee is itself an ancient volcano, and probably was active at the 

 time the Jew-stone was spread over the Coal-measures. 



Believing, as I do, that all these patches of older Coal-measures 

 were once connected, and formed part and parcel of the Coalbrook- 

 dale and South Staffordshire Coal-fields, I think there can be little 

 doubt that the Coal-measures of Cornbrook and Brown Clee were at 

 one time of infinitely greater thickness ; but previous to the deposit 

 of the Jew-stone they must have been considerably denuded, because, 

 so far as we can co-relate the Cornbrook deposits with those of 

 Coalbrookdale, they are not more than half their thickness, so that 

 the history of events which we have passed before us in review 

 points to an uneven surface, upon which the Millstone Grit was 

 deposited ; changes of level and denudation at that time, subse- 

 quently the deposition of Coal-measures and their accumulation, 

 until the whole of the productive Coal-measures of Coalbrookdale 

 and South Staffordshire were formed — and afterwards a vast denu- 

 dation over the districts we are speaking of, which removed the 

 greater part of this deposit, leaving only here and there islands to 

 testify that they once had been. Then follows the deposit of the 



