FOREST OF WYRE AND TITTERSTONE CLEE HILL COAL FIELDS. 1009 



that neither there nor anywhere else in the Midlands do red marls associated with 

 espley rocks set in at so low a level in the Coal Measure sequence. 



A few years later my colleague Mr E. E. L. Dixon * found that in the Titterstone 

 Clee Hill Coal Field, a few miles to the west, the ordinary productive measures, 

 characterised by sweet coals and believed by Mr Daniel Jones to belong to the 

 same horizon as the Sweet Coal Group in Wyre Forest, contain " red clays and green 

 sandstones of ' espley ' type, at intervals from a few feet above the base upward." 

 Mr Dixon, who extended his investigations into the western borders of the Wyre - 

 Forest Coal Field, leaned to the belief that near Kinlet the Sweet Coal Group underlies 

 the Sulphur Coal Group without unconformity, and therefore corresponds to part of 

 the Etruria Marls. This view was not, however, supported by the evidence of the 

 fossil flora of the Clee Hill Coal Measures, which suggested to Dr Kidston a horizon 

 lower than that of the Etruria Marls, nor by the presence of workable coals and 

 ironstones, which nowhere else in the Midlands occur in the Etruria Marl Group. 



Meanwhile the attention of geologists and mining engineers was diverted from 

 the visible coal field to the borderland of red rocks lying to the east, where an 

 experimental bore-hole had been put down in 1903-1905 at Claverley, 5 miles east 

 of Bridgnorth, to test the character of the ground between the Wyre Forest and 

 South Staffordshire Coal Fields. The site lies a quarter of a mile east of Bulwardine 

 Farm, a mile south of the village of Claverley. The chief results of this experiment 

 have been described by Dr Walcot Gibson ; t it will therefore be sufficient to give 

 an abstract of the section (see Table, p. 101 0). 



The Lower Permian Group yielded fossil plants of Upper Coal Measure species, 

 by which Dr Kidston correlates the group with the Keele Beds of North Stafford- 

 shire, i.e. the basal beds of the Radstockian subdivision of the Upper Coal Measures 

 (p. 1079). The occurrence of bands of Spirorbis-limestone forms another link by 

 which these beds are attached to the Coal Measures and not to the true Permian. 



The Halesowen Sandstone Group proved to be 364 feet thick, whereas, 6 miles 

 to the south-west, at Highley Colliery, the shafts of which commence below the 

 Keele Beds, the group appears to be at least 394 feet thick. In the boring the 

 Halesowen sandstones contain two thin coals, separated by 109 feet of measures. 

 These may possibly represent the Brock Hall and Main Sulphur coals ; but the 

 Spirorbis-limestone of Kingswood, which should come between them, was not found, 

 though looked for. In this respect the boring agrees with the sections of the 

 Highley Colliery and the Kinlet Colliery, in which no such limestone is recorded, 

 though it cannot be said that it was absent. The Halesowen Sandstones in the 

 boring yielded abundant plant-remains. 



Below the Halesowen Sandstones, 193 feet of alternating red clays and espley 



* Rep. Brit. Assoc, for 1910, pp. 611-613 (1911). 



t Stimmanj of Progress for 1904 (Mem. Geol. Surv.), pp. 150, 151 (1905); ibid, for 1905, pp. 172-174 (1906). 

 Also Trans. Inst. Min. Eng., vol. xlv (1912-13), pp. 30-48. 



