LOWER LICKEY QUARTZ RIDGE. 



493 



It is necessary, first, to understand the physical geography of this small but in- 

 teresting tract. A narrow quartzose ridge, composed of the oldest rock, extends 

 from Holly Hill to beyond Kendal End, a distance of about three miles, in a line 

 striking from 15° W. of N., to 15° E. of S. This ridge, of only a few hundred paces in 

 width, and not exceeding four to five hundred feet in height, consists in reality of 

 six or seven elliptically shaped hills, which are traversed by the old and new roads from 

 Bromsgrove to Birmingham. The former descending from near the summit of the 

 Bromsgrove Lickey (960 feet above the sea), passes through the lower ridge near its 

 centre ; the latter, avoiding the high hills of New Red Sandstone, winds round in the low 

 grounds between their northern flank and the southern termination of the Clent Hills, 

 and then cuts through the quartzose ridge near its north end, between Rubury Hill and 

 Snead's Heath. The Bromsgrove Lickey Hills, as laid down in the Ordnance Map, 

 are the high hills west of this little ridge. They consist in great part of New Red 

 Sandstone described in a previous chapter ; their summits and sides being covered 

 with a vast quantity of the pebbles of the disintegrated conglomerate of that formation, 

 but their northern end, called Lickey Beacon, &c, is a trap rock, being in fact a pro- 

 longation of the Clent and Abberley Hills. Correctly speaking, therefore, the quartz 

 ridge should be called the Lower Lickey, though it is not known as such in the country 1 . 

 Small as it is, the Lower Lickey has all the external characters of an old mountain 

 chain, being covered with heath, while the Higher Lickey is verdant to the summit, 

 a distinction which is well explained by the difference in their lithological structure. 

 This lesser ridge is also flanked on each side by thin patches of coal, which lie in the 

 longitudinal valleys that separate the quartz rock from the surrounding hills of New 

 Red Sandstone and trap. 



On first examining the tract in 1834, I observed that at two points, on its eastern and south- 

 eastern flank (Colmers and Kendal End), the quartz rock was overlaid by a limestone and shale, 

 which contained some corals and shells of the Wenlock formation. At Kendal End, these strata 

 rise into a small green knoll, which was cut into about twenty-three years ago, and there are still 

 ample remains upon the surface to indicate the age of this deposit, the strata of which are here 

 highly inclined on the slopes of the quartz rock. The solid limestone extracted, did not exceed a 

 yard in thickness, but it was accompanied by small concretions called " hatch cakes." The ex- 

 istence of another thin band of limestone was ascertained by sinking for coal at the Colmers (coal 

 moors ?) in the depression to the east of the quartz ridge^ and between it and the New Red Sandstone 

 of Holly moor. The shreds of coal and shale, which here represent the whole carboniferous series, 

 were easily penetrated ; and the sinkings were continued through a thin layer of impure limestone 

 only thirteen inches thick, which, from its appearance and organic remains, I consider to be one 

 of those calcareous courses which underlie the Wenlock shale, and form the top of the Caradoc 

 Sandstone. (Woolhope limestone, see PI. 36. fig. 9.) It was from this band of impure limestone 



1 These lower hills should certainly have one common term to mark the range of the quartz rock. The south- 

 ern end, forming part of the demesne of the Honourable R. Clive, M.P., is known as the Cofton Hacket and 

 Bilberry Hills, to the north of which are Snead's Heath, Rubury Hill, and Holly Hill. 



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