Border Country of Salop and North Wales; ^c. 259 



throughout the parishes of Arley, Fillongley, Corley, Allesley, and Meriden, 

 and in a large quarry at Attleborough. The sandstone attains its greatest 

 elevation at Corley, which according to Mudge and Colby's Trigonometrical 

 Survey, is 521 feet above the level of the sea. It is nearly horizontal in its 

 stratification. A thin bed of striated gypsum has been found in it on sinking 

 wells at Higham and Witherley. Its usual appearance is that of the red sand- 

 stone of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the midland counties. But on the sides 

 of the road at Meriden it is distinguished by its great con choidal fracture; 

 and to the north of this spot, in the direction of Fillongley and Arley, its 

 lower strata assume the appearance of a calcareous breccia. In both of these 

 particulars it bears a close resemblance to the red sandstone in the vicinity of 

 Exeter and Teignmouth. The cementing matter of the breccia varies con- 

 tinually even in the same stratum, being sometimes red clay, and sometimes 

 carbonate of lime either amorphous and earthy, or crystallized. The sub- 

 stances thus united into a conglomerate rock are still more diversified, vary- 

 ing in size from grains of sand to pebbles several inches long, and consisting 

 principally of encrinal limestone, greenstone, quartz, and hornstone. The 

 pebbles of hornstone are either red or yellow. A large proportion of the lime- 

 stone pebbles both here and at Barnford Hill, Prankley, and the Lickey, 

 instead of their usual gray colour agreeing with the uniform appearance of the 

 undisturbed strata of limestone, present the fine yellow colour of Sienna mar- 

 ble. They do not appear to contain magnesia, and evidently owe their peculiar 

 colour to the presence of iron, changing to a brick-red when burnt into lime. 

 Perhaps their colour may have arisen from the infiltration of the red oxyd, 

 which is so abundantly diffused through the base of the rock, and which may 

 have been converted into a yellow carbonate of iron after penetrating the 

 limestone *. The strata vary from one to four or five yards in thickness. In 

 the parishes of Fillongley and Arley quarries of this rock have been worked 

 at various places both for building and for making lime. 



Regular beds of limestone are worked at Mr. Williams's pits, half a mile 

 north of Bedworth, Mr. Pinkerton's N.E. of Arbury Hale, and Mr. Ludford's 

 at Hockley in the parish of Ansley f , Thus the limestone seems to occur 

 in a line passing from N. W. to S.E. Its dip is in the two former places 

 towards the W. or S. W. ; in the last it is in the opposite direction. It appears 

 to rise from under the red sandstone already described, and probably the 



* In Geol. Trans, vol. v. p. 493, Mr. Henslow mentions '^ferriferous carbonate of lime " as 

 occurring in a similar breccia in the Isle of Man. 



t Some account of the mining operations at Ansley is given in Bartlet's Manduessedum Ro, 

 manoruin, p. 146. 



