COAL SEAMS NEAR BEWDLEY. 



133 



Though the coal seams are of slight value, quarries of fine building-stone might be 

 wrought in the sandstones which extend over the Forest of Wyre, and are prolonged 

 to the north-east of Stanley-upon-Severn. A beautiful variety of this rock has recently 

 been exposed by Mr, Child on the south-eastern face of Kinlet Park, where blocks of 

 any dimensions could be raised, rivalling in quality the best building-stone of the coal 

 measures of other parts of the kingdom 1 . It would be tedious if not useless to empty 

 memorandum books, in which are noted details of these coal measures, consisting of 

 alternations of thick-bedded sandstone and shale. The banks of the Severn from Upper 

 Arley to Bewdley afford excellent sections of such beds, particularly upon the right 

 bank of that river under Cliff Wood, where grits and sandstones both thickly and thinly 

 bedded, are interlaced with shales of various colours. 



At Stanley near Higley, the carboniferous strata wedging out into a narrow zone, 

 flanked on the west by the Old, and on the east by the New Red Sandstone, are 

 thrown unconformably against the latter. (See PL 30. fig. 9.) This fault is therefore not 

 analogous to that of Lydney, on the eastern flank of the Forest of Dean in Gloucester- 

 shire, with which it has been compared 2 . In the latter case the carboniferous limestone 

 forming a girdle round a very regular coal basin, is suddenly lost, owing to a fault, 

 which brings up the Old Red Sandstone into contact with the coal measures ; but 

 throughout the Stanley tract, the coal measures uniformly repose, at once, upon the 

 Old Red Sandstone, the carboniferous limestone not being in existence ; whilst the rock 

 at this point, which from its mineral aspect was supposed to be Old Red Sandstone, 

 is nothing more than the lower portion of the New Red System, which can be followed 

 to Chelmarsh ridge, and is there seen to overlie these coal measures. This rock is here 

 brought abruptly against the coal by an upcast of the latter, as in many parts around 

 the Coal Brook Dale and Dudley fields 3 . (See chapter 4. pp. 57, 60.) 



At Stanley there were formerly extensive coal works, which penetrated the overlying coal sand- 

 stone to a depth of thirty-three yards, when two seams of poor and pyritous coal were reached at a 

 further depth of eighty-four yards j and beneath other beds of sandstone and white rock was a lower 

 coal, consisting of four small seams, which though in parts slightly sulphureous, was said on the 

 whole to be equal in quality to that of Lower Harcott. These works have long been abandoned, 

 owing chiefly to the bad quality of the coal, and to the strata being dislocated as well as cut off on 

 their western and eastern flanks by the great fault of Higley and Alvely. (PI. 30. fig, 9 f ) Hori- 

 zontal galleries were formerly driven on to the east from these coal works, until the Lower New 

 Red Sandstone was reached, and the fault was completely stripped. (See PI. 30. fig. 9.) 



A mass of these coal measures extends on the left bank of the Severn, about four miles to the 

 High Grounds above Arley Wood. In some parts it is only a few hundred paces in width, as at 



1 The proximity of fine masses of sandstone to the navigable river Severn may, at some future day, excite 

 speculation in these quarries. 



3 Messrs. Buckland and Conybeare, South-west of England, Geological Transactions, vol. ii. p. 285. 



3 In all the portion of the Map relating to this district, the geologist will perceive great changes in the 

 boundary lines of previous geological Maps. 



R 



