COAL STRATA AT MAMBLE AND PENSAX. 



135 



At Mamble, where there are also three seams of coal, the two uppermost are separated by only a 

 foot or two of clod, but the third or lower, lying nine yards beneath them, is harder and better in 

 quality. It is from two feet to two feet four inches thick, and is reached by shafts at depths from 

 forty to sixty yards. The beds here dip slightly to the north, and are not dislocated by any faults 

 exceeding a yard or two in effect. This, therefore, is one of the least irregular portions of the 

 sterile coal tract of Bewdley Forest. 



At the Menith Wood pits, near Pensax, the shafts are from fifty to sixty yards deep, and pass 

 through a considerable thickness of sandstone, having a northerly dip. Two beds of coal, of two 

 feet each, and separated by only two feet of clods, are wrought, and are evidently the same which 

 occur at the foot of the Abberley Hills. A lower and half-yard coal is not worked, owing to its 

 exceedingly bad quality. The dip in Menith Wood is northerly. The overlying coal sandstone is 

 exhibited in fine quarries at Pensax, and is a good building material; but it thins out towards the 

 Abberley Hills, where the overlying strata are composed chiefly of clunch and shale. 



There is little else worthy of notice respecting the southerly portion of these coal 

 measures, except that the faults by which they are affected, increase on approaching 

 the trap rocks of the Abberley Hills, and that the strata have there been so completely 

 inverted that they appear to dip beneath the older formations, a phenomenon which will 

 be subsequently explained (PI. 36. figs. 1. to 3.) 



The coal which was extracted on the western slopes of Woodbury Hill, and south 

 of the Hundred house, consisted merely of thin shreds of carboniferous strata, thrown 

 up in elevated positions, or rather squeezed up in separate patches between the trap 

 and Silurian rocks (PI. 36. fig. 2.) These poor and shallow deposits were necessarily 

 soon exhausted, and no accurate records of the works remain. 



Similar patches of coal were wrought on the western side of Barrow Hill, and it is 

 said also near Old Storridge Hill 1 . 



From the preceding details, it appears that no portion of the broken carboniferous 

 tract, extending from Bridgenorth to the Abberley Hills, has ever afforded seams of coal 

 profitable to any extent, although numberless trials have been made over almost every 

 part of its surface. The coal, it is true, is still partially extracted, and can be advan- 

 tageously used in the burning of lime. From its sulphureous properties, it is also 

 preferred to coal of the sweetest and best quality, in the drying of hops, for which 

 purpose it is much used on the south-western frontier of the coal tract j but through- 

 out the whole of the region described, it is little employed for household or manufac- 

 turing purposes. The extreme thinness of the whole formation is most clearly exhi- 

 bited at many points, where it forms narrow zones between promontories of Old and 

 New Red Sandstone, or where it rests, as at the Abberley Hills, upon the edges of 

 the Silurian rocks : in such situations it would evidently be hopeless to undertake 

 mining operations of any sort. In other parts of the field, particularly to the north- 

 west of Kinlet and between that place and Billingsley, the strata are so disturbed, and 



1 In the first of these cases the refuse of the old pits is still to be seen. In the second, my information has 

 been derived from the testimony of Mr. Jabez Allies of Worcester. 



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