RAVENHEAD COLLECTION IN THE BROWN FREE LIBRARY AND MUSEUM. 393 



Lower Coal Measures. 



These overlie the Millstone Grit, and form the lowest subdivision of the Coal 

 Measures. They have been called the Gannister Series, a provincial term, alluding 

 to the hard siliceous beds which often form the floor of the few coal seams they 

 contain. The formerly well-known Huyton Quarry* was worked in strata in this 

 subdivision, and the hard grey flagstones occur in other parts of the Coal Field, 

 and form some of the highest beds, as at CJpholland, where they occur at the east end 

 of the tunnel. 



All traces of the quarry have now been covered up, but forty years ago a good 

 section of the strata was exposed, and 50 feet of grey micaceous flagstones, with some 

 6 feet of shale near the top, formed an anticlinal arch parallel with the railway, with the 

 beds dipping to the east and west. The surfaces of many of the beds were beautifully 

 ripple-marked, and tracks of Annelids were abundant. Some curious casts, supposed 

 to have been those of the burrows of bivalves, and Calamites Cistii, Brongt., were of 

 common occurrence. The strata exposed in the quarry were more fully shown in the 

 railway cutting from Huyton to St Helens, about 200 yards farther north, where the 

 grey flagstones were found to be 60 feet thick, with 10 feet of shale and a thin bed of 

 coal (1 foot 6 inches) over them. The beds were found to dip at various angles to the 

 south-east, and included some that were worked below the bottom of the old quarry. 

 Shales and flagstones, with the seams of coal known as " Mountain Mines," occur at a 

 considerable depth below the Huyton flagstones, which are 240 feet below Little Delf 

 Coal at the base of the Middle Coal Measures. 



The Lower Coal Measures are continued at the surface from Huyton Quarry to the 

 east of Prescot over a large area about Hurst House and the Hazels. Another area, 

 forming the eastern portion of Knowsley Park, belongs to the same subdivision. Near 

 Hag Delf, in the Park, a little east of the Stand Quarry, a bed of coal (2 feet 4 inches), one 

 of the "Mountain Mines," occurs, and is said to have been worked about a hundred years 

 ago. The old pit banks remain, and traces of iron smelting occur at the same place ; but 

 trees have grown over the spot, and little is known as to when the coal and ironstone 

 were worked. The highest beds occur along the eastern boundary of the Park, par- 

 ticularly about Trap Wood, where flagstones and shales have been exposed, though little 

 can be seen of them now, and much less of the strata in the Park generally than when 

 explored in 1862. 



There is a considerable area, several square miles, of the Lower Coal Measures 

 between Prescot and Parbold ; and the Liverpool and Yorkshire Kail way presents a fine 

 section of them at Pimbo Lane Station, which was originally described by Mr Binney, who 

 found here Goniatites Listeri and Aviculopecten papyraceus, fossils characteristic of the 

 horizon. The beds are exposed in a deep cutting, and consist of black shales, micaceous 



* A Station on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. 



