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 lowest zones of the Permian repose conformably upon the Upper
Coal Measures of the South Staffordshire Coalfield in the slopes
of the hills to the south of Halesowen, and its strata are seen
in corresponding relation to the Carboniferous on the east of the
Coalfields of the Forest of Wyre and Coalbrookdale, and to the west of
the Coalfield of Eastern Warwickshire.
The Permian is everywhere covered up unconformably, or locally
overlapped, by the various members of the Triassic formation; all the
subdivisions of the Triassic series being found resting immediately
upon it in turns as they are followed from the valley of the Severn to
the neighbourhood of Charnwood Forest.
In the neighbourhood of Enville and the Forest of Wyre, three divisions
are recognisable in the Permian, viz.:--
(1.) _Lower Red Sandstones and Marls_, with bands of calcareous
conglomerate.
(2.) _Coarse Breccia._
(3.) _Upper Red Sandstones and Marls._
Round the South Staffordshire Coalfield the Breccia is the highest
division exposed, and this only occurs in force to the south of the
coalfield.
Between Tamworth and Kenilworth, to the east of Birmingham, the Permian
strata floor a wide tract of country, and lie almost horizontal. Red
sandstones, marls and beds of breccia occur in association, but the
divisions named above are not individually recognisable.
By far the most striking local member of the Permian formation is
the so-called _Volcanic or Permian Breccia_. It is found in scattered
patches over an area of about 500 square miles, extending from the
Malverns to Enville, Stourbridge, and the Lickey Hills. It is made up
of angular fragments of volcanic rocks, tuffs, altered shales, grits,
and slabs of fossiliferous sandstone and limestones, all embedded
in paste of bright red marl or pebbly sandstone. It is usually both
underlain and overlain by red sandstones and marls, but sometimes, as
at Stagbury and Woodbury Hills, &c., in the Valley of the Severn, it
reposes at once upon pre-Permian rock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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