122 



COAL-FIELD OF THE BROWN CLEE HILLS. 



very superior in quality to those of the great Staffordshire field 1 , and at first sight it 

 appears surprising, that these valuable products should not be turned to better account. 

 They are, however, excluded from fair competition, by the want of means of transport ; 

 and it is painful to record, that with all the spirit and enterprise which can be be- 

 stowed on such works, the manufacture of iron in the Clee Hills is attended with little 

 profit. Vast heaps of the finest ore have lain unheeded for many years on the high 

 grounds of the Brown Clee, and it is only by the actual juxtaposition of the coal, iron- 

 ore and lime at Knowlbury, in a lower and more favourable position, that Mr. Lewis is 

 enabled to sell, though at a very small profit, a manufactured article of the very first 

 quality. The construction of canals or rail-roads would soon render the Clee Hills the 

 centre of wealth and industry. 



Coal-field of the Brown Clee Hills. (PI. 30. fig. 6. north end, and PI. 31. fig. 4. south- 

 east end.) 



The Brown Clee Hills consist of two distinct elevations called the " Clee Barf" and 

 the "Abdon Barf." The latter is 1806 feet above the level of the sea, and is the 

 highest land in Shropshire. The summits are composed of basalt, beneath, or on the 

 slopes of which, are thin carbonaceous deposits containing seams of bad coal. No 

 basalt occurs in situ on the sides of these hills, but rolled fragments of that rock en- 

 cumber the surface in many places. 



These carboniferous tracts, the loftiest in Great Britain, are surrounded on all sides 

 and separated from each other by the Old Red Sandstone ; and as it rises to a consi- 

 derable height upon the flanks of these hills, the thickness of the overlying coal mea- 

 sures can at once be read off by any geologist. Their dimensions are further proved 

 by numerous works which penetrate them, and in consequence of the Old Red Sand- 

 stone dipping inward from the sides of each of the hills, the coal is clearly seen to lie 

 in two elevated and broken basins of shallow depth. See Map and Sections above men- 

 tioned. 



In some parts of the Clee Barf there are three beds of coal, the uppermost being about two feet, 

 and the second, called the Batty coal, about three feet thick, and the third or single coal about two 

 feet six inches in thickness. The two upper coals, usually pyritous and of a very inferior quality, 



1 I need hardly tell my readers that the discoveries by which iron ore was found to be convertible into 

 wrought iron, through the application of furnaces fed with coal, and the admixture of limestone as a flux, 

 have completely driven oat of the pale of commercial speculations, all those fields of iron in which the ore is 

 not directly associated with the other minerals required in its manufacture. Such for example was the effect 

 upon the great forest tract in the wealds of Surrey, Sussex and Kent, which formerly supplied the metropolis 

 with iron wrought by charcoal, and which still contains a much greater quantity of iron ore than many of our 

 coal-fields, and often of purer quality. In the last century, before the manufacture of iron by coal was com- 

 menced, the ores of the Clee Hills were most largely and profitably worked, though transported to forests on 

 the banks of the Teme, to be smelted with charcoal. 



