On the Basaltic Formation of the South Staffordshire Coal Field

Abstract

The South Staffordshire coal field consists of a long wedge-shaped mass of the carboniferous formation, lying immediately upon the Wenlock limestone and shale of the Silurian system, which has been thrust up through the permian and new red sandstone deposits. From its base, near Hales Owen, where it is about six miles wide, and which there gradually rises from underneath the permian and new red sandstone, it extends in a direction N.N.E. towards the town of Rugeley, a distance of about twenty-three miles, bounded on its two sides by two large faults, which converge towards each other until they meet near that town. These faults bring this wedge-shaped mass of Wenlock limestone and shales, and coal measures, into immediate and abrupt contact with the permian and new red sandstone, on its east and west sides; but this is somewhat interrupted on the eastern side, near Walsall, by the elevation to the surface of the Wenlock shale and limestone. The effect of the elevatory force which raised this great mass, was to bring the Wenlock shale and limestone, and the coal measures, which were previously covered with the permian and new red sandstone, estimated by Mr. Jukes to be about 3,000 feet thick, from its former low level to such a height that the Wenlock limestone, which lay at the bottom of all, now forms the highest land in the district, and the coal measures are on a level with the surface of the new red sandstone. Thus the whole of ...