LUDLOW ROCKS OF THE MALVERN AND LEDBURY HILLS. 41 1 



Wenlock limestone, in others by a third ridge formed by the Caradoc sandstone. (See vignette.) 

 With the exception of certain breaks and flexures, for a knowledge of which the map must be con- 

 sulted, the Ludlow formation ranges from north to south, passing from Suckley Hill by Berrow Mill, 

 Hales End, Hill Houses, High Grove to Mathon Lodge, on the western side of which it is thrown 

 by undulations into two parallel ridges. (PI. 36. f. 7-) Thence by Brockhill Copse to Evendine Street, 

 it occupies only one zone. At Chance's Pitch and Dawes Castle, it is deflected from the Malvern 

 chain, and is split into three parallel lines, having a strike from N.N.W. to S.S.E. : the hills ex- 

 tending from Combe Hill to Dogberry Pools, north of Ledbury, mark the outermost of these lines. 

 At Ledbury (a point of dislocation and great flexure), the formation is suddenly twisted from the direc- 

 tion of the Wenlock limestone which there takes its place, being changed from N.E. and S.W., to N. 

 and S. Throughout their course on the western side of the Malvern Hills, these Ludlow rocks 

 preserve all their Salopian mineral distinctions, and nearly all the fossils, (see p. 197 et seq.), with 

 the exception of the Pentamerus Knightii, which is wanting in the central or calcareous part, re- 

 presenting the Aymestry limestone. The quarries at Langley Green, Hale's End Wood, Evendine 

 Street, Chance's Pitch, are perhaps the best localities for fossils ; particularly that of Hale's End, 

 where the equivalent of the Aymestry limestone is very well displayed. The upper Ludlow rock re- 

 peatedly passes at various degrees of inclination beneath the Old Red Sandstone, and the lower 

 Ludlow shale or mudstone is as uniformly incumbent on the Wenlock limestone. In general, the 

 upper Ludlow rock is better developed than the lower, particularly along the edge of the Old Red 

 Sandstone, but the latter is equally well exhibited at certain points, (Evendine Street, in the deep 

 lanes and water-courses between Brockhill and Colwall Coppices). As in Salop and West Hereford, 

 the upper rock, including the calcareous band representing the Aymestry limestone, is a harder 

 stone, and hence it constitutes the ridges, whilst the lower, a true mudstone, has been scooped into 

 longitudinal valleys parallel to the ridges. (PI. 36. figs. 6, 7 & 8.) In the shale beds which pass 

 down into the Wenlock limestone, we find occasional concretions of impure limestone 1 . 



The Ludlow rocks on the side of the High Road at Chance's Pitch, between Malvern and Ledbury, 

 are very instructive, and present clear examples of the same jointed structure as in Shropshire. At 

 Ledbury, and thence for a short distance through the park of Mr. Biddulph, the whole of the Ludlow 

 formation, so fully laid open in the above-mentioned localities, is reduced to a narrow band of thin- 

 bedded yellowish sandstone, which from its position at the Dog Hill seems to be the equivalent of 

 the Downton Castle building-stone, p. 197. This rock being for the most part in a very broken and 

 partially altered condition, is of slight lithological value. It is vertical at the Dog Hill, and in 

 Ledbury Park is thrown over into an unconformable position by a reversed dip, as explained in 

 PI. 36, f. 8. 



1 The mania of boring for coal through these ancient rocks, of which many other examples are cited in this 

 work, has unfortunately affected some of the inhabitants of this tract. At Mathon Lodge, anno 1832, I found 

 open shafts, which had been sunk to a depth of about 120 yards in the Lower Ludlow Rock, at a point marked 

 in the section, (PI. 36, f. 7.), where it ought to have been apparent to any one however ignorant of geological 

 phenomena that the limestone of the adjacent ridge of Croft Farm and Castle Copse, must, by its inclination, 

 be carried beneath this very shale. This, as well as the other absurd trials in the incoherent shale of the 

 " Silurian System," wherever it happens to be black, has been caused entirely by the lithological and mineral 

 characters of the rock, which in truth does not differ very materially to an unpractised eye from the shales of 

 the coal-measures. (See observations p. 328 et seq., on the coal speculations in Radnorshire, and on the 

 similarity between certain coal shales and the rocks of this age in Pembrokeshire, p. 374 et seq. 



