Handbook of Birmingham: Prepared for the Members of the British Association, 1886British Association for the Advancement of Science
History
Handbook of Birmingham: Prepared for the Members of the British Association, 1886
British Association for the Advancement of Science
Birmingham (England); Natural history -- England -- Birmingham
The basement beds of the Hartshill Quartzite are locally composed
of fragments of the underlying volcanic rocks (Caldecote Beds).
The Quartzite itself, which forms the chief road metal of the
neighbourhood, is laid bare in a long series of quarries between
Nuneaton and Hartshill.
The overlying purple and green shales of the Stockingford Beds range
from Marston Jabet, south of Chilvers Coton to Atherstone Outwoods.
The best section is seen in Parley Park Lane near Atherstone, and the
fossils have been obtained from this section, from Atherstone Oakwoods,
Camp Hill, and Marston Jabet.
The best section of the succeeding grey and black Shales occurs in
the cutting of the Midland Railway near Stockingford, which gives its
name to the formation. Their fossils have been procured from the rocks
of this section; from the cutting at Chilvers Coton, the banks of the
Coventry Canal, from Oldbury reservoir, Mawbornes and Merevale Park.
The numerous intrusive dykes of volcanic rock form a conspicuous
feature in the geology of these Cambrian strata. They are formed of
coarse-grained diorites, much quarried for road metal, kerbs, and
setts. Good sections occur in the quarries near Tuttle Hill, in the
railway cuttings near Stockingford and Chilvers Coton, and in quarries
near Oldbury Reservoir.
A small patch of these Nuneaton Cambrians is met with on the
north-western margin of the East Warwickshire coalfield, at Dost Hill,
to the south of Tamworth. It consists of the usual annelide-bearing
Stockingford Shales, pierced by an intrusive mass of diorite.
LOWER LICKEY HILLS.--The core of the Lower Lickey Hills between Barnt
Green and Rubery, about eight miles south of Birmingham, is formed of
a mass of quartzite identical in all its main features with that of
Hartshill, near Nuneaton.
At the village of Rubery, in an exposure on the roadside, it is seen
to be unconformably overlain by fossiliferous Llandovery sandstone, the
basement beds of which contain fragments of the underlying quartzite in
abundance. At the south-western extremity of the Lower Lickey Range the
quartzites contain fragments of igneous rocks, and appear to pass down
into a series of felspathic grits, pierced by dioritic dykes similar
to those of the Nuneaton District. Good sections of the quartzites are
laid bare at Rubery Station, at the village of Rubery, and in a large
quarry near the roadside, a mile northward from Kendall End. In the
last-named locality the quartzites are seen greatly folded and faulted.
WREKIN DISTRICT.--In the Wrekin area the great volcanic series of
the hills is immediately overlain by a quartzite similar to that of
the Hartshill and the Lickey, the basement bed similarly containing
fragments of the underlying volcanic rocks. The quartzite is succeeded
by the Hollybush sandstone, with its characteristic fossil, _Kutorgina
cingulata_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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