NEW RED SANDSTONE IN SHROPSHIRE AND STAFFORDSHIRE. 41 



Water is scarce along the edge of the escarpment, which has occasioned sinkings to 

 be made at Grinshill in the red sandstone to the depth, as already stated, of 222 feet 

 below the base of the quarry, when the borings were still in that rock. Mr. Aikin, 

 however, well observes, " a circumstance remarkably characteristic of this kind of sand- 

 stone, is the great number of meres, or deep pools, which it contains. The outline of 

 all these pools more or less approaches to circular ; they receive no streams, and very 

 often do not transmit any, the loss by percolation and evaporation being nearly sup- 

 plied by the springs that occupy the middle and deepest part of their bottoms ; I say 

 nearly, because all that I have examined bear evident marks of gradual diminution : in 

 many, this change has advanced so far as to convert the whole area, with the exception 

 of a deep pit or two near the centre, into a peat moss, and some of the smaller and 

 shallower ones are not only entirely filled up, but are even applied to the purposes of agri- 

 culture." (Geol. Trans. Old Series, vol. 1 . p. 1 93. l ) The Grinshill and Hawkstone range of 

 sandstone is much denuded to the east and south-east, sinking gradually into the plain 

 towards Newport, but it maintains an elevated outline to the west-south-west, and can 

 also be followed, at intervals, to the east-north-east by Market Drayton into the high 

 district of Ashley Heath, 803 feet above the sea. (See Map.) To the west-south-west 

 it occupies Harmer Hill, Pirn Hill, and the bold rocks at Ness Cliff, from one hundred 

 to one hundred and fifty feet high. It is there, for the most part, a thick-bedded, deep 

 red and yellowish, loosely cohering, quartzose sandstone, composed of minute rounded 

 grains of quartz, of yellowish or brownish colour, with here and there a scale of mica, 

 cemented together by a small portion of red clay. Veins of small dimensions, com- 

 posed of quartz, cemented by a chalcedonic paste, not unfrequently traverse the beds, 

 projecting on the surface of the friable sandstone. Further particulars respecting these 

 veins and the derangement of the strata, will be pointed out in a subsequent chapter, 

 after describing the trap dykes of Acton Reynolds. 



Beds of sandstone of this age are only to be seen at rare intervals in the great plain 

 of Shrewsbury, the surface being loaded with immense accumulations of gravel, clay, 

 sand and boulders. Such sandstones, however, occupy the northern and north-eastern 

 portion of that plain, and are separated from the coal-fields by bands of dolomitic 

 conglomerate and lower red sandstone. By pursuing a transverse section from the 

 Lias of Prees, through the underlying red marls and sandstone of the Hawkstone and 

 Grinshill Hills, and thence to the edges of the Shrewsbury coal-field, (see PL 29, fig. 3.) 

 we best see the great expansion of the New Red System in Shropshire. The country 

 between the coal-fields of Coal Brook Dale and Staffordshire, of which Shifnal is the 

 centre, is also occupied by deep red thick-bedded sandstones, lying in a trough. (See 

 Section, PI. 29, fig. 13.) These central rocks of the system, further extend over all 

 the wide tract between Stourbridge and Kidderminster, constituting for the most part 

 a rye-land district. The blood-red soft sandstone of the latter town is a good type of 



1 These meres are supported by thin courses of marl, or superficial detritus. 



