FOREST OF WYRE AND TITTERSTONE CLEE HILL COAL FIELDS. 1011 



If Dr Kidston is correct in his inference (p. 1081) that the Lower Coal Measures 

 (Lanarkian) are present, the whole of the measures below the Brick-Clay or Espley 

 Group (Etruria Marls) may be abnormally thin, and the coals unworkable or absent 

 through conditions being unfavourable. It is remarkable that the lowest Coal 

 Measures show no signs of shore-conditions, and it is possible that their junction 

 with the Silurian is a fault. But in spite of this absence of workable seams, we have 

 at Claverley the typical South Staffordshire sequence, in which red clays and espley 

 rocks form a well-marked group (the Etruria Marls) intermediate in position between 

 the productive measures and the Halesowen Sandstones. 



But in the Wyre Forest district the lithological conditions are quite otherwise. 

 At Highley, red beds recur time after time as the colliery-section is followed for 

 394 feet below what is regarded as the Main Sulphur Coal. At Shatterford, red 

 beds are still more abundant. Along the course of the Birmingham aqueduct red 

 clays and green sandstones are conspicuous at the surface down to the Old Eed 

 Sandstone floor ; while farther west, at the Titterstone Clee Hill, Mr Dixon finds 

 that similar rocks are interbedded among the coal-seams themselves. 



It appears, then, that the Claverley boring, while confirming the Upper Coal 

 Measure age of the Lower Group of the local Permian rocks, and supporting the 

 view that the Sulphur Coal Group represents the Halesowen Sandstones, contributed 

 little towards the settlement of the age (l) of the Sweet Coal Group of Wyre Forest, 

 and (2) of the barren measures lying between the Sulphur Coals and the Sweet Coals. 



Matters stood thus till 1914, when Dr E. A. Newell Arber,* in a paper in which 

 the work of previous observers is reviewed in full, brought forward a number of 

 fresh facts and conclusions, based on his own study of the fossil flora of the Wyre 

 Forest Coal Measures. The more important of Dr Arber's conclusions are the 

 following : — 



1. The dominant type of rock of both the Sweet Coal and the Sulphur Coal 



Series is a coloured shale or clay — chocolate, red, green, or mottled. 

 Espley rocks occur in both series. The rocks immediately associated with 

 the coals themselves are of the usual grey colours (op. cit., pp. 374-5, 431). 



2. The fossil flora associated with the sweet coal-seams worked in the Highley 



district (at Billingsley, Highley, and Kinlet Collieries) is a Middle Coal 

 Measure flora (op. cit., pp. 407-8). 



3. The unproductive measures of the Dowles Valley belong to the Middle Coal 



Measures down to 886 feet from the surface in a boring known as the Alton 

 boring (op. cit,, pp. 408-9). 



4. The Coal Measure beds in the Claverley boring below 1800 feet are Middle 



Coal Measures (op. cit., p. 409). 



* " On the Fossil Floras of the Wyre Forest, with Special Reference to the Geology of the Coalfield and its 

 Relationships to the Neighbouring Coal Measure Areas," Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. Lond., series B, vol. cciv, pp. 336- 

 445 (1914). 



