58 



LOWER NEW RED, SHROPSHIRE. 



coarse gravel, but in several situations they are seen to be overlaid by a red calcareous 

 conglomerate, which also dips away from the coal-field, or to the east. The great thick- 

 ness of these lower sandstones has been recently proved by a spirited undertaking of 

 the Earl of Dartmouth, at Christchurch near West Bromwich, to sink through them to 

 the coal. These workings descended through a variety of red and spotted sandstones, 

 blotchy deep red and variegated marls, and thick courses of red calcareous grit, concre- 

 tions of impure limestone (cornstone), and ferruginous, deep red, hard, calcareous sand- 

 stone, the fissures in the rock being sometimes coated with crystals of pink-coloured 

 sulphate of barytes, and sulphuret of iron. At my last visit, the shafts, then at a depth 

 of two hundred yards, were passing through a light red micaceous sandstone, in which 

 blotches of ferruginous marl were mixed with grains of carbonaceous matter. Some of 

 the layers of this rock were separated by laminse of black mica ; concretions of calcareous 

 sandstone, as round as cannon balls, occurred at intervals, and altogether there was so 

 much calcareous matter as to give the rock a very concretionary aspect. The reader will 

 perceive, that these are the very same strata which overlie the coal in natural sections at 

 other places; and hence there could be little difficulty in predicting, that coal measures 

 would be found beneath them, particularly as it is well known, that the coal seams of 

 the adjacent field of Dudley, do not deteriorate or thin out in the vicinity of these works, 

 but are simply lost by faults. The existence of the upper beds of coal having first been 

 ascertained by borings carried down to a depth of more than seven hundred feet below 

 the surface; they (and the lower beds) have since been reached by sinkings, an account of 

 which, with a full description of the strata passed through, will be given in the chapter 

 on the Dudley coal-field. (PI. 37. fig. 1 .) It is indeed impossible to mention this enterprise, 

 without congratulating geologists on the effect which their writings are now producing 

 on the minds of practical men ; since it was entirely owing to inferences deduced from 

 geological phenomena, that this work was commenced, whilst its success was derided 

 by many of the miners of the adjacent coal-field 1 . 



In the eastern parts of Shropshire between Enville and Bridgenorth the Lower Red 

 Sandstone occupies low terraces and depressions beneath the calcareous conglomerate, 

 and at Shatterford is conterminous with a thin band of coal measures. The uppermost 

 strata are so very similar to those of the great mass of rock above the calcareous con- 

 glomerate, that the description of the one, may almost serve for that of the other. Thus, 

 for example, in the cliffs opposite Bridgenorth, and in the mass of rock on which the 

 town itself is built, the beds possess nearly all the characters of the sandstones in the 

 higher part of the system, being thick-bedded, soft, of a deep red colour, and traversed 

 by innumerable lines of false bedding, which often meet in wedgelike forms ; thus : 



1 The Earl of Dartmouth commenced these works at the suggestion of his principal agent Mr. Dawson, a 

 most intelligent gentleman, but not practically versed in mining affairs, who simply applied in this case the 

 knowledge he had derived from geological writings. 



