THE LIAS MARLSTONE OF LEICESTERSHIRE. 
05 
and a few local blue-liearted encrinital bands. The ironstone 
is here well jointed, a feature which facilitates its extraction. 
The lower arenaceous and unproductive beds appear in a rail¬ 
way cutting in one of the quarries, faulted against the 
ferruginous beds. 
From Holwell the Marlstone extends westwards by 
Wartnaby to Green Hill, near Old Dalby. At Wartnaby it is 
worked close to the edge of the escarpment by the Stanton 
Iron Company. The stone is friable, and contains very few 
fossils; this, however, is no disadvantage from an iron¬ 
master’s point of view. The ore is taken away by a short 
mineral line to a tip on the Nottingham and Melton 
(Midland) line at Old Dalby. 
From Green Hill the Marlstone extends eastwards in a fine 
line of escarpment to the railway tunnel at Long Clawson. At 
this point the Rock-bed and underlying Lias shales have been 
broken through and their place occupied by boulder clay to a 
depth of nearly one hundred feet. From Long Clawson the 
Marlstone Rock bends round to the north-east along the well- 
wooded heights of the Belvoir Hills to Belvoir Castle, that 
noble edifice itself crowning a diminutive outlier of this rock. 
On the way we pass the extensive workings of the Eastwell 
Iron Company, situate at the edge of the escarpment, about two 
miles south of Statliern Station. The ironstone here is porous 
and highly absorbent, containing as much as 25 per cent, of 
moisture, and is but slightly fossiliferous. It is quarried 
along two working faces nearly half-a-mile in length. At 
the crest of the hill the cutting for the tram incline, by which 
the ironstone is taken on to the Great Northern Railway 
below, shows the Marlstone Rock, of which twenty-five feet 
are exposed, resting on Middle Lias shales. 
At the time of writing ferruginous marlstone is also 
exposed in the cuttings of the Eastwell branch of the Great 
Northern Railway, and also of their Eaton branch, north of 
its junction with the Eastwell branch. At Black’s Barn, 
a little south of the Eaton viaduct, the Marlstone, twenty- 
four feet thick, was penetrated in a well beneath thirty feet of 
boulder clay. The Holwell Iron Company are now working 
the stone by the side of the new line at Eaton, and the 
Staveley Company and Messrs. Oakes and Company near 
Swaine’s Lodge, about a mile further north. In the Belvoir 
district there are numerous exposures of the Marlstone Rock, 
chiefly in small roadside quarries. Of these we will notice a 
single one, viz., the Duke’s Farm Quarry, near Woolsthorpe 
Old Church, in order to illustrate the character of the stone 
in this neighbourhood. 
