62 
THE LIAS MARLSTONE OF LEICESTERSHIRE. 
while employed on the parliamentary survey of the Notting¬ 
ham and Melton line fon the Midland Railway Company, was 
struck by the redness of the ground in the neighbourhood of 
Holwell, and concluded that there was iron there. In the 
year 1873 Messrs. Dalgliesli and Allport examined the district. 
Samples of the Holwell ironstone were procured and sent to 
Mr. E. Riley, F.C.S., of London, to be analysed, and that 
gentleman gave a very favourable report of the stone. A 
large sample of the ore was in the following year sent to 
Staveley to be smelted. The result proved the correctness of 
Mr. Riley’s opinions, the stone turning out easy to smelt, 
and the pig-iron produced from it being of good quality. In 
1875 a company was formed and a lease of the ironstone 
obtained. In the following year a mineral branch line was 
constructed from Holwell to the Midland Nottingham and 
Melton line near Asfordby, and the district was thus opened 
out, and the ironstone got into the market. At first 
the Holwell Company sent the whole of their ore to the 
Staveley Company and other large iron smelting firms 
in Derbyshire and elsewhere. In 1881 they erected a couple 
of furnaces at Asfordby, near Melton Mowbray, and since 
that year they have smelted the bulk of the ironstone they 
have got in the district at their own works. At the present 
time they have a third furnace ready to put into blast. 
These, it should be. mentioned, are the only furnaces in the 
Leicestershire ironstone field, and at Asfordby the manu¬ 
facture of iron is carried on with due regard to the most 
approved scientific methods. 
The Marlstone Rock as a formation—though not for the 
whole distance as an available source of iron—extends 
uninterruptedly through the district for a distance of thirty- 
five miles, namely, from Welbourn in Lincolnshire, on the 
north, to Medbourn, near Market Harborough, on the south. 
Within these limits its prevailing north-easterly strike varies 
somewhat, whilst its thickness varies very considerably. 
Owing to these causes and to subsequent unequal atmospheric 
denudation, as also to the effects of at least one considerable 
fault, its outcrop is extremely irregular. The maximum 
thickness of thirty feet is attained in the middle part of its 
range, or between Barrowby, near Grantham, and Scalford, 
near Melton. When followed north and south of these two 
points, the Marlstone is found at first gradually, and then 
more rapidly to thin away and eventually to die away 
altogether/ 1 ' Hence, wo may look upon the Leicestershire 
* The Marlstone also displays a tendency to attenuate in an 
easterly direction. 
