496 



TRAP OF THE CLENT AND LICKEY HILLS. 



Trap of the Clent and Lickey Hills. 



On referring to the map it will be perceived, that these hills are of much greater ex- 

 tent than any other masses of similar origin in this region, for they extend from the 

 north of Hagley on the N.N.W., to the Lickey Beacon on the S.S.E., a distance of 

 about six miles. They vary in height from 800 to 1007 feet above the sea, and their 

 outline is very dissimilar from that of the surrounding stratified deposits, their summits 

 being more or less conical, and their sides steep and indented with combs. 



The only rock discoverable, beneath the fine green turf which uniformly covers them, 

 is precisely similar to that described, (p. 138), and which, piercing the coal measures 

 of Bewdley Forest, forms the nucleus of the Abberley Hills. It is a felspathic mass, 

 chiefly composed of brownish-red, compact felspar, occasionally porphyritic, and some- 

 times passing into a fine concretionary rock. With the solitary exception of the small 

 boss, to which I have already alluded, at the southern end of the Lower Lickey Hills, 

 I am not aware that any solid face of this rock has been exposed ; but as it is the only 

 stone found beneath the surface, the circumstance of its occurrence only in fragments, 

 by no means invalidates the inference, that these hills are altogether composed of similar 

 materials, (see p. 138 1 .) 



I have previously shown that certain stratified volcanic grits, lying between these hills 

 and Hales Owen, were formed towards the close of the deposition of the coal measures, 

 and during the accumulation of the Lower New Red Sandstone, (p. 471.) Although 

 similar bedded trap may also have issued from the fissures through which the Clent 

 and Lickey Hills were erupted, it it is clear that the chief masses of these hills were 

 emitted long posterior to the accumulation of the bedded trap, which, in common with 

 the coal measures and Lower New Red Sandstone, has been dislocated by the outbursts 

 of the rocks we are now considering. 



Trap rocks of peculiar characters, and generally more or less porphyritic, are asso- 

 ciated with the lower members of the New Red System pretty generally throughout 

 Europe, particularly in Germany, where their occurrence is so common as even to mark 

 the place of the " Rohte-todte-liegende." In England, it is true, that felspathic trap 

 rocks, passing into porphyry, syenite and greenstone, have been erupted at various and 

 very ancient epochs ; but the trap of the Clent, Lickey and Abberley Hills, which we 

 know to be of comparatively recent date, is quite distinct from all other volcanic rocks 

 of the surrounding region. (See Introductory Chapter on Volcanic Rocks, p. 68, and 

 pp. 138, 419 et seq.) 



1 At some points indeed, road-stone quarries have been opened, but they merely expose a collection of 

 shivered angular fragments of trap, like the heaps described near the Abberley Hills. Springs rise at very high 

 levels, as is the case in the Malvern Hills, and in one instance almost at the summit of the ridge, (Lickey 

 Beacon) . The quartz pebbles derived from the disintegration of the Red Sandstone, and which are heaped up 

 in prodigious quantities on the declivities but never on the summits of this ridge, will be referred to hereafter. 



