TRAP ROCKS OF KINLET, ARLEY AND SHATTERFORD. 



137 



Trap Rocks in and adjacent to the Forest of Wyre. 



Trap of Kinlet. — The trap of Kinlet, like that of the Clee Hills, has been intruded 

 amid dislocated coal measures, but in this case there is not the same clear proof of its 

 overlying the strata, though it occupies some of the highest knolls. This trap is a 

 greenstone, in which white spots of granular felspar are dotted through a base of dark 

 hornblende, and is therefore dissimilar in structure from the trap of the Clee Hills. 

 The precise relations of this rock are little known, because it occurs chiefly in the 

 beautiful demesne of Mr. Child, where the subsoil has been only slightly disturbed. 

 Recently, however, a considerable face of it has been exposed in a copse west of Kinlet 

 house, and it is there arranged in rude prismatic columns. The ravines on the sides of 

 this park exhibit sections of carboniferous sandstone and shale almost surrounded by pro- 

 truded masses of Old Red Sandstone, forced up, probably, by the same volcanic action 

 which ejected the basalt on the top of the Kinlet Hills. Besides their convulsed con- 

 dition, wherever they approach the trap, the strata afford another convincing proof of 

 the posterior intrusion of the latter. On the slopes of this trap the sandstone has a 

 highly altered character, being almost in the state of quartz rock 1 . As this indurated 

 sandstone lies in a highly inclined position close to the greenstone, there can be little 

 doubt that the change of structure has resulted from the action of heat. 



Trap of Arley and Shatterford {left bank of the Severn). — This is another outburst of 

 trap rock through the same coal measures, the village of Arley being distant only about 

 four miles from that of Kinlet. In this case the trap forms a dyke, which has a main 

 direction from south-west to north-east for a distance of about two miles and a half, viz. 

 from near the left bank of the Severn at Worrel's Mill to Coldridge Wood, north-east 

 of Shatterford, and is then deflected north-north-east to Arley Wood. At Shatterford 

 the dyke traverses the high road from Kidderminster to Bridgenorth. The predominant 

 character of the rock is a light green, finish-grained and highly crystalline greenstone, 

 the hornblende for the most part predominating over the felspar. In some parts it ap- 

 proaches in character to the trap of Kinlet, and in others is not unlike varieties of the 

 greenstone and basaltic greenstone which is intruded into the coal series of Coal Brook 

 Dale. This dyke rises to the surface only here and there. To the west of the high 

 road near Shatterford a small coal shaft has been sunk within a few paces of the dyke. 

 On the wall of the dyke exposed by this shaft is a sahlbande of slaty greenstone, in 

 contact with which, the shale is compact and hard, resembling a lydian stone, while 

 the sandstone beyond it is also much indurated ; these with the succeeding beds of 



1 It is called " White Jewstone" by the country people, in contradistinction to the " Black Jewstone," or 

 basalt. The rock of Kinlet has been long used as the best road-stone of the adjoining- country, and is brought 

 chiefly on the backs of asses from the summits and sides of the hillocks west of Kinlet Hall, where it is always 

 to be found in loose lumps and blocks, but is now wrought at the quarry before mentioned. 



2 See observations on this head in the chapter upon the Caradoc trap. 



