The 100th anniversary celebrations were held at the DMAG. At 17:30 the celebrations officially commenced with an introduction from the Dudley Mayor, Cllr Melvyn Mottram, followed by a re-enactment of the speech given by Sir Charles Lapworth, during the original opening of the museum in 1912. Paul Smith, the new curator of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, followed with a talk titled ‘A geological gift to the future’, a precise to Lapworth’s speech. After a forty minute refreshment break Graham gave a talk on, ‘Things of Beauty and Wonder’ – a potted history of the Dudley Geological Collection. After which, the Dudley Museum Year of Geology was officially launched.

Calymene blumenbachii from Dudley, 000460

DMAG is part of Dudley Council’s Museum Service, which also includes the Red House Cone, Stourbridge and the Broadfield House Glass Museum, Kingswinford. The beginnings of the DMAG started with centuries of traditional coal, limestone and ironstone mining and early pioneering scientists recognising the Dudley area as important for finding superb fossils. From the 1830′s onwards eminent geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison made numerous visits to the area. He encouraged local miners to establish a collection of Carboniferous Coal Measures and Silurian Limestone fossils. The Collection contained many new species and included the famous Calymene blumenbachii, or ‘Dudley Bug’.

After Murchison published his work on ‘The Silurian System’, in 1839 he encouraged and inspired local mine agents, industrialists, lay people, patrons and luminaries of the day to establish the Dudley and Midland Geological Society. Murchison inaugurated this, the Midland’s first geological society, in 1842. The Society aimed to keep the Collection together and the first permanent museum to house it was a public house, The Britannia Inn, in Dudley town centre.

Records, or lack of, indicate that this first geology society declined sometime after 1843. However, in 1862 a second incarnation emerged as the Dudley and Midland Geological Scientific Society and Field Club. At this time Society members, with Murchison’s backing, decided that the Collection should be re-housed. Consequently arrangements were made to establish a geological museum in Dudley, which according to Graham ‘became the mechanics institute on Wolverhampton Street’. The new Museum was opened in 1863.

However, in the early 1900′s the geological society’s second incarnation saw its demise along with the declining local mining industry. In 1903, under threat of being broken up and sold off, the collection passed into the hands of Dudley Council who kept it in the basement of their old free library and art school. It was here that during the late 19th Century Dudley Council had been acquiring fine art. In 1911 they acquired the fine collection of Dudley MP Brooke Robinson and displayed it in what had become the DMAG.  The same year a student from Birmingham University, Mr Edward Worsey, started cataloguing Dudley’s abandoned Collection and put it on display.

At 3.30pm on 12th December 1912 Professor Charles Lapworth, from Birmingham University, officially opened the doors on the geology Collection at the DMAG. This heralded a new era of geological conservation and promotion, with Dudley’s fossil collection enjoying a permanent home in the town centre. Up until the 1960′s, the Museum was generally being used as a School of Art and Library.

Pecopteris plumosa, 004010

In 1975 the geological society’s third incarnation, the Black Country Geological Society (BCGS), was born. Since then, the BCGS has had close links with the DMAG and acts as a lobbying organisation and practical body for the conservation and development of geological sites and collections. An early act of the BCGS was to re-catalogue and re-house the collection in 1984. A temporary curator was appointed to take care of, and develop the collection, although it lay dormant again in 1986 once funds dried up. The same year the BCGS successfully campaigned to get local government to recognise geological heritage in its policies and also to create the role of Keeper of Geology at the DMAG.

When the first permanent keeper of geology, Colin Reid, was appointed in 1987 he introduced a new approach to displaying exhibits at the DMAG. This involved moving away from conventional hanging of fine art. Instead, more theatrical exhibits were staged that ran for longer periods and were directed more towards popular culture and the national curriculum. Beginning with Dinosaurmania and The Age of the Pharaohs the exhibits culminated in the opening of the Time Trail gallery in 1992.

However, the reintroduction of more fine art, budget cuts and a need to redirect workloads, meant that towards the end of the 1990s, the museum began to move away from ‘blockbuster’ type exhibitions, which resulted in declining visitor numbers. Colin retired in 1999 and in February 2000 Graham Worton was appointed as the new Keeper of Geology for the DMAG. The loss of mining from the Dudley area meant the fundamentally close connection that had existed between the local community and geology also disappeared. 

A key approach of the DMAG has always been to conserve and celebrate heritage. However, it also aims to make geology more accessible whilst providing a warm and welcoming place, training and support to the local community and those new to the science of geology. The Universities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton awell as Natural England also benefit from the DMAG’s expert support.

Each year DMAG and the Dudley Museums Service education team run a programme of events and exhibitions aimed at supporting the educational community and inspiring the public. Through this DMAG is re-establishing the long lost bond between the local community and geology. Especially through pioneering projects at the Wren’s Nest National Nature Reserve. Projects like the Waves Project (2002), the WROSNE Project (2008) and the recent Ripples Through Time Project (2011) have all aimed to educate and improve the lives of the local community, whilst helping them to appreciate and learn about what is on their doorstep.

DMAG has also established a Young Museum Geoteam composed of graduates and students, which encourages young aspiring geoscientists to get more involved with geodiversity and conservation through regular volunteering programmes. The museum was also key in putting together and launching the Geology Matters website in March 2011, a project led by Wolverhampton Art Gallery. This searchable website allows users to find information about fossil, mineral and rock specimens held within the Black Country museums. The Geology Matters website can be found at www.geologymatters.org.uk.

Marsupiocrinus coelatus crinoid from Dudley, 008120

During the production of the Geology Matters website the Geoteam was required to develop a digital archive of the Collection housed at the DMAG. Today, the Collection contains approximately 18,000 fossil, rock and mineral specimens, including the remaining Carboniferous and Silurian specimens collected in the 1830′s. Approximately 5,000 specimens have been added to the collection since the first Keeper of Geology was appointment in 1987. Gallery 8, the Geology Gallery, displays only part of the Collection, the rest is currently stored at Himley Hall. As well as displaying specimens from three geological periods the Gallery is also home to ‘Fluffy’, the life size replica model of a Woolly Mammoth.

The Dinosaurs returned to the DMAG in 2007 taking up residence in Gallery 1. They are the first thing visitors see as they walk through the main entrance shop into the museum. This display aims to highlight and provide insight into the lost world of the dinosaurs. It includes full-scale reconstructions of land living dinosaurs and Jurassic marine reptiles along with dinosaur skeleton and fossil fragments.

The museums’ Gallery 2 displays Dudley UnEarthed, which presents two timelines. The first is dedicated to telling the story of local Silurian geology and the history of the rocks of Britain. The second tells the story of the Industrial Revolution and human history within the Dudley area. For more information about the DMAG visit www.dudley.gov.uk/dudleymuseum.

Since September 2001 DMAG has hosted regular rock and fossil fairs that draw large numbers of people from across the country. The next one in September 2013 will form part of the Dudley Museum Year of Geology celebrations. With a monthly programme of events planned 2013 looks like being a big and busy year for the DMAG team and a promising future for geology. Hopefully for another 100 years.

By Andy Harrison
BCGS Field Secretary
Amblecote
West Midlands

Like many at the time BGCS member Chris Broughton recalled how he slept right through it, “and never felt a thing”. Messages left on the Geology Matters website, included an account from Paul Goodrich, who lives in Manchester, “I thought I had left the handbrake off my car and it had rolled gently down to the house, but rather than the first single jolt, there was also a brief low rumble and the doors rattled”. Christine Hawthorne, from Perton was sitting in her lounge at the time, “when the chair moved!” then, “My friend rang to ask if I felt it too! Could not believe it”.

BGCS newsletter editor, John Schroder, working in Kyoto at the time was hoping to experience an earthquake whilst touring Japan. Disappointedly he recalled how, “The Earth didn’t move for me in Japan”, but was surprised, on phoning his wife Julie in Birmingham, “to be told that I had missed one in Dudley!”

John Radley, Curator of Natural Sciences at the Warwickshire Museum Service, remembered how the Dudley earthquake occurred exactly two years after one in Warwick.  That night, up late watching the television John heard a noise, “Something like a train, moving rapidly closer (sounded like it was travelling up the garden towards the house) culminating in a rumbling and mild shaking”. Having experienced the Warwick earthquake he knew exactly what it was and was soon texting friends and listening to reports on local radio.

Dr Colin Prosser, Principal Specialist in Geodiversity at Natural England, was staying with his mother, in Dudley, at the time before travelling to a meeting in Bournemouth the next morning. He remembers vividly, “the rumbling of the quake as it woke me, like a tube train approaching, and my mother and others in the street popping outdoors in dressing gowns to reassure each other”. The next day at his meeting, pleased at the chance of feeling the event Colin was introduced as ‘English Nature’s geologist who had been, “shaken out of bed in Dudley by an earthquake”.

BCGS Chairman, Gordon Hensman was having a nightcap in his sitting room when the earthquake struck and remembered how, “The drinks trolley and the china cabinet both shook and clinked as glasses and precious ceramics hit each other. Constable’s “Hay Wain” swung to and fro, and Millais’ “Last of England”, moved an inch from the wall and back again, while the shade on the standard lamp joined in the general animation. What on earth was happening? That nightcap in my hand was certainly powerful stuff, and I had to down it in one to prevent it spilling as the armchair lurched from left to right and back again”. After two coal blackened miners walked through his sitting room wall, speaking deepest Black Country, Gordon checked his empty glass as it slowly dawned on him that, “there had been an earthquake – no other explanation!” A few days later he heard from some friends who told him of their experience in Brittany when the stone building they were staying in was subject to strong shaking from the earthquake. 

Maragret Rodway, from the Herefordshire and Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust, recalled how having experienced three earthquakes since living in Malvern she was unfortunately, “in Bath at the time of the Dudley one”. However, her father who lives in Rowley Regis remembered the shaking, “Afterwards he found that most of the mortar on the outside of the damp course of his bungalow had fallen out, so he assumed that the house must have shifted slightly on its foundations”.

Local walking group members also offered their memories of the Dudley earthquake. Many slept through it, however some remembered the event like Steve Tustin, from Tipton, who recalled how a large rumbling sound woke him up, “my house also felt like it was slightly shaking as I had been in a deep slumber I was totally unaware of what was happening!” Then the neighbour was banging on Steve’s front door, worried about what was going on and fearing that the nearby Midland metro had derailed.

Outside they noticed several other people out on the street in their night clothes all wondering at what had just occurred. Steve discovered that it was an earthquake the following morning on the radio. Three days later he noticed, “a crack in the concrete floor of the garage that hadn’t been there before”, and “two roof tiles that had been dislodged and slid into the guttering”.

Another walking group member was woken up by the sound of the earthquake rattling furniture. Whilst another thought from the noise that, “the garage had collapsed”. One member living in Bedford at the time only felt a minor shudder, but was surprised on waking the next morning to hear people talking about his home town of Dudley. Another group member, living at home in Dudley, was up working late when she felt the earthquake and saw her computer shaking.  Her parents however, “woke up, believing it to be the dog”.

By Andy Harrison
BCGS Field Secretary
Amblecote
West Midlands

The BCGS @ The Dudley Rock and Fossil Show

I had not been a member of the Black Country Geological Society (BCGS) for long and was enjoying my first Dudley rock and fossil fair on the weekend of the 21st / 22nd September 2002. However, what happened as Sunday night passed into Monday morning made the weekend most memorable.

During the night I sensed a deep rumbling noise and was jolted awake to the sound of falling plaster behind the cavity wall of the flat, I was renting at the time in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton. At first I thought the next door boiler had blown up, but I soon realised that in actual fact I had probably just witnessed my third ‘earthquake’. Next morning the radio confirmed my suspicions that indeed an earthquake had struck the Black Country.

Occurring at 23:53 Universal Time Coordinated (UTC), on Sunday 22nd September 2002 (or 00:53 local time, Monday 23rd September 2002) the earthquake measured 4.7 magnitude. A small 2.7 magnitude aftershock was also felt locally throughout Dudley and in Birmingham on 23 September at 03:32 UTC (04:32 local time).

During the earthquake seismograph stations belonging to the British Geological Survey (BGS) and scattered throughout the UK gathered data. This showed that the epicentre was at mid-crustal depth (approximately 14km down) and at approximately 1km west of the Western Boundary Fault. On the ground surface this placed the epicentre approximately 3km northwest of Dudley town centre, at the junction of High Arcal and Himley Road.

The Western Boundary Fault is a major north–south striking fault zone, which has downthrown Triassic rocks to the west, against older Upper Carboniferous rocks, belonging to the South Staffordshire Coalfield, to the east. The fault zone stretches from the Bristol Channel to Lancashire passing to the west of Dudley and to the east of Stourbridge.

The BGS data indicated that the source of the earthquake was due to strike-slip movements along the Western Boundary Fault zone. These movements were probably a response to regional stresses built up through dominant northwest compressional forces from the spreading of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Earthquakes of such magnitude are not uncommon in the UK, which experiences around 300 earthquakes every year, with one around 5.0 magnitude occurring approximately every ten years.

Before the Dudley earthquake I had experienced two others, which included the Llyn Peninsula earthquake of 1984 and the Bishops Castle earthquake of 1990, both of which measured 5.4 and 5.1 magnitude, respectively.

The next day and over the following weeks the Dudley earthquake was on the lips of most people and the brunt of several humorous e-mails.

Many BGS accounts collected after the event spoke of objects, such as CDs, books, plant pots, candlesticks, picture frames, mirrors and clocks, being thrown about. Other accounts spoke of violently shaking furniture, children and parents being thrown out of bed or off chairs. There were no recorded major injuries and only three minor ones involving banged heads and a broken toe. Minor structural damage was also reported to buildings including cracks in walls, plasterwork, mortar and window sills and dislodged roof tiles.

The event was felt mostly across the West Midlands, but also over an area of 260,000 square kilometres (100,387 square miles), reaching as far as Wales and Southern Ireland, Liverpool, Carlisle, Durham, Yorkshire, Wiltshire, Cornwall, London and The Netherlands.

Next time we will investigate the personal stories of local people who may or may not have experienced the quake.

By Andrew Harrison
BCGS Field Secretary
Amblecote
West Midlands 

The tour then continued to the third and final part- the geology collection!

Halysites Coral, The oldest chain in the Black Country!

Chris Broughton led this part of the tour which focused on the geology of the Black Country. Chris is both a Documentation Assistant and Geologist. The collection itself contains 10,000 British fossils! It is because of Dr. Fraser that the collection exists. As a keen scientist, he collected specimens which date back many millions of years. The collection itself contains some amazing finds, such as the ‘Dudley Bug.’ There is also the fantastically preserved head of a 170 million-year-old fish, a proto-dinosaur footprint and an Ichthyosaur jaw. What is really important to note is that a significant part of the collection are local finds. I didn’t realise that there is such a wealth of fossil finds here in the area!

Alethopteris sp. Coal Measures Fern, gl1339

If I thought the conservation of art was tough enough to manage, nothing prepared me for what Chris told me about geology conservation. There are so many threats, for example dust and pollutants (managed through dust covers in drawers where specimens are kept), flood (due to pipes in the basement, the risk of flood is possible, so the collection is placed in raised cabinets), pests (monitored through sticky insect cards), pyrite decay (humidity needs to be below 60% or fossils can crumble to dust!, specimens are therefore placed in sealed boxes. HOWEVER, too dry or below 45% humidity, bones in the collection can crack and fall apart), radioactivity and radon gas (this comes from rocks and minerals such as Granite and can cause problems for curators), toxic minerals such as Lead, Mercury, Arsenic, Thallium and also asbestos minerals (these are dangerous to us when handling the collection).

Chris then took us through a bit of time travelling and we explored the area from millions of years ago and how the landscape has changed over time. It was a fascinating presentation and I probably sat with my mouth gaping through most of it, I was a bit in awe.

To find out more, I was told about the website Geology Matters. This details more about the fossil, mineral and rock collections in the Black Country.

Overall, I had an amazing time on this tour, it was so informative and my mind was buzzing with everything I had learnt. Thank you to all the people who produced the tour and were a part of the tour.

 By

Kerry Grocott
Birmingham

Follow my blog by clicking here

We know from fossils found there that the limestone from Wren’s Nest was formed in a shallow tropical sea around 425 million years ago and the purest beds of the limestone (called the Upper and Lower Quarried Limestone Members by geologists) can be burnt to produce high quality lime.

A fossil hunting trip to the Wren Nest, Dudley

Lime is in demand today as it is used in the restoration of older buildings, where the use of Portland cement is not suitable.

More information on the event can be found here.

Seven Sisters Cavern: The miners have removed as much of the limestone as possible using what was known as the "pillar-and-stall" method. As these pillars have eroded further, they have left the caverns in danger of collapse.

Murchison lists some of the words used by the miners and quarrymen in his Silurian System:

• “Strong hanging stone”
• “Top sink”
• “Pricking”
• “Half-yard measure”
• “Strong grey measure”
• “The flints”
• “Silks measures”
• “bavin” and “rotch”
• “ballstone”

Some of the names we can only begin to guess at the meaning of, but it is not unreasonable to think that perhaps “Half-yard measure” would have been a band of limestone 18 inches thick, and “pricking” is described as a way-board of shale (blasting layer) so would perhaps have been drilled (pricked) with numerous holes which could be filled with black powder to blast layers of rock away from the walls of the mine.

We do know that “ballstone” referred to a dome-shaped mass of pure limestone which would have disrupted the bedding of the rock around it, and could sometimes have been very large, up to 6 metres high by 20 metres wide. We now refer to them as bioherms and we know that they represent the remains of small reefs similar to those found in tropical lagoons today, and here the reef-building organisms such as corals and stromatoporoids formed massive calcareous structures which would later be turned into limestone.

Today the science of lithostratigraphy deals with the naming of rock layers and formal names are assigned to these rock units such as the Upper Quarried Limestone Member.

The Silurian System, Roderick Murchison

As new kinds of animals, both living and extinct, are discovered, scientists attempt to classify them according to their physical characteristics and relationships to each other. This branch of science is known as Taxonomy. Taxonomists work to describe new species, and to refine, and sometimes redefine, previously described species.

“A very large specimen of it, 5 inches long by 3 ¹/₆ wide, has been lithographed at Birmingham, and the species has been figured under the English name above stated by MR. F. Jukes and Mr. J. Sowerby”

The specimen figured in "The Magazine of Natural History, Volume II"

Having considered the Barr trilobite’s similarity to a number of already published descriptions of other trilobites, Murchison decided that this represented an entirely new family of trilobites and proceeded to name it Bumastus barriensis. He published this new name, described and illustrated the new species in his book, “The Silurian System”.

Bumastus refers to the resemblance to a type of large grape, the latin word for which would have been familiar to educated readers from Virgil’s Georgics.

barriensis means “of Barr”, the location where specimens could commonly be found.

When a new species is described in this way, usually one specimen is selected as the physical example which represents the species. This specimen is typically kept in a public collection or museum where it can be easily accessed by curators and researchers wanting to compare it to other discoveries. It is then known as a type specimen (Holotype is the most common designation, but there are other kinds of type such as lectotype and syntype).

You can search for specimens of Bumastus and other fossils within the collections of the museums services located in the Black Country using this website. Why not see what you can find?

We don’t know where this specimen was found, but given the history of the collection it is likely to have come from the Dudley area. During the nineteenth century limestone was extensively quarried in the area – it could be burnt to make mortar for building, or to purify molten iron in the furnace. The rock would have been extracted by hand; the quarrymen would often find “curiosities” such as this fossil and put them to one side.

At the same time, science was beginning to lend an understanding to the true nature of fossils, that they were the remains of animals that lived millions of years ago. Collectors would tour the country to examine mines and quarries such as those in the Dudley area, and would often purchase specimens from the men working there. Whilst they may not have fully understood the true nature of the fossils they found, the quarrymen would probably have known only too well that a complete specimen was worth more to the collectors.

“But I will be unable, I find, to add materially to my collection here. It is rare to find a well-preserved trilobite, so rare that the fossil-dealers charge for them from ten shillings to five pounds, and I cannot afford to collect specimens at such a price.”

“The life and letters of Hugh Miller”, Volume 2; Dudley, October 16th 1845

A price of £5 for a specimen in 1845 would equate to something like £250 today, which would have been a significant sum of money to a quarryman and his family.

This trilobite may have been victim to an unlucky blow of the hammer, or parts of the shell were washed away before fossilisation, but either way, someone has sought to “improve” or “restore” the specimen! Using crude tools, a quarryman has carved the missing parts of the body out of the surrounding rock. Without access to the education and reference facilities that we often take for granted today, his only reference would have been his memory of the last complete specimen seen, which probably accounts for the appearance of this fossil.

“Restoring” fossils was not at all an uncommon practice – the locals of Whitby would often carve heads onto the common Dactylioceras ammonites to reinforce the suggestion that they were in fact “snakestones”, and Somerset collector Thomas Hawkins was well known for his habit of “improving” specimens of his sea dragons (Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs) which led to a scandal involving the British Museum and a Parliamentary inquiry!

What of this specimen in the museum today? Should we return it to it’s original condition? Attempt a better restoration? Well, we have much more complete examples of this trilobite, Calymene blumenbachii, available for study, so it makes most sense to leave this example as it is, as a record of the human history behind our collections.

You can see many more examples of fossils collected from the limestone quarries around Dudley in the collections of Dudley Museum and Art Gallery.

Sorting out the loft turns up some interesting things, and in my case files of old geological leaflets, notes and letters. One email I recently discovered related to my interest in the final destinations of superb Silurian fossils originating in Dudley, mostly from the Wren’s Nest. It was from an old friend of mine who now lives in Perth, Western Australia, who had responded to my request for information by telling me that there was prominently displayed in Western Australia Geology Museum, a “Crinoid from Dudley, Worc” (sic) together with many other typical Wenlock Limestone fossils. He followed this up by attending a lecture given by Ken McNamara in the University of Western Australia which houses the museum. At that time (2004) he was the Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology; he is now a Senior Lecturer at the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences. He explained that the fossils were part of the James Tennant Collection and outlined the interesting history of the collection, after paying tribute the Prof Hugh Torrens of Keele University for much of his source material.

James Tennant

James Tennant came to London in 1824 at the age of 16 looking for work and was apprenticed to James Mawe in his mineral, fossil and shell shop at 149 Strand. He became manager in 1829 on Mawe’s death, working with his widow. In 1838, through his influential contacts of ‘gentlemen collectors’ he was appointed to teach mineralogy at King’s College, London and then became Professor of Geology. He died in 1879 having accumulated a number of outstanding mineral and fossil collections, containing many fine Dudley specimens. One collection was acquired by the British Museum, but the Keeper of Geology, Henry Woodward, decided to send it to Western Australia, where two of his relatives, Henry Page Woodward, Government Geologist and Bernard Woodward, Curator of Geology in the newly established Western Australia museum, were in need of good material. Thus nepotism resulted in Western Australia getting an excellent collection.

Unfortunately, transporting it was another matter. Heavy rock and mineral specimens were loosely packed alongside fossils. The softer specimens suffered greatly by the constant rolling of the vessel, the delicate Eocene fossils were ground to dust. Further calamities occurred when unloading at Freemantle, a boat capsized and several crates were submerged for a significant period. When they were finally unpacked it was found that the sea water had either removed the labels or made them illegible. Apparently labels were still being matched to specimens in 2004. However, what was salvaged forms the nucleus of an excellent collection containing fossil types that are poorly represented in Western Australia. Among them are several fossils that first saw the light of day at Dudley.

Written by Bill Groves
BCGS Member

The Black Country is an area located just to the northwest of Birmingham right at the heart of the UK. It includes the towns of Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton and is noted for its industrial past. It is so named because of the concentration of mining, iron production and metal working in the area. There is significant evidence for the Black Country to lay claim to be the home of the industrial revolution. The earliest reference to mass iron production in the Black Country is a factory located in Wednesbury during the 1400’s. American visitor, Elihu Burritt was so impressed with what he saw in 1869 he said “The Black County, black by day and red by night, cannot be matched for vast and varied production by any other space of equal radius on the surface of the globe.”

This legacy began back in 1598 with the birth of Dud Dudley, son of the Earl of Dudley. Dud attended Balliol College, part of Oxford University until his father’s business was struck by financial troubles. He then returned home to help run his father’s foundry. History was then made by the discovery of coal as a successful fuel to smelt iron, rather than the dwindling supply of charcoal fuels due to the timber being used for ship production. His success led to a patent from the King around 1620 for the process used in the factory located at Pensnett Chase, near Himley Hall in Dudley. Dud produced a record 7 tonnes of iron per week. This process was later developed and refined by Abraham Darby who was born at Wrens Nest Manor in 1678. Abraham had a factory in Coalbrookdale in 1709 and used coke as a fuel.

What is now left of the Lower Quarried Limestone after the mines closed

Dudley’s limestone has been mined for centuries for use as an agricultural fertilizer amongst many other uses. The Black Country continued its influence on industrial developments as limestone was discovered to be a very successful flux in the iron smelting process. For this reason, the Wrens Nest limestone mines produced up to 20,000 tonnes annually. The mines extend thousands of metres underground and formed a honeycomb network of caverns supported by huge pillars of rock. Dudley’s mine supporting rock pillars are unusual as a majority do not support vertically but are inclined, and some are almost horizontal due to the near vertical dip of the rocks known as the Much Wenlock Limestone Formation in certain areas. Many of the underground mines are connected by canals, and the only way to enter the caverns at the present is by canal barge since many of the original entrance shafts have been sealed up. The canals were the main transport route for the coal and limestone, they linked the mines to the furnaces. Many of the early canals were only created to allow passage for the heavy coal traffic.

The final limestone was excavated from the Wrens Nest in 1924. As a result the mines have been left for nature to dominate once more. The Seven Sisters daylight gallery is an open air mine which has been stabilised with tonnes of an intrusive igneous dolerite hardcore, but many of the underground mines have collapsed as the last miners robbed the final supporting pillars during their retreat. 70 meters beneath the Wrens Nest National Nature Reserve is the Step Shaft mine, adjacent to the largest unsupported underground canal basin in the UK. In the basin there are original 200 years old timbers, nails, plateway rails and even cart wheels which are extremely well preserved due to the wet, low oxygen environment. Cathedral cavern and the Minstrel Gallery (South workings of Wrens Nest East Mine) adjacent to the canal basin were in filled with sand in 2009 to prevent the walls collapsing and losing this spectacular cavern. It is claimed to be large enough to fit the volume of St Paul’s cathedral inside, this is certainly the case for the larger Dark Cavern. In the future the aim is to reopen Cathedral Cavern as part of the Strata Project, which will allow visitors to explore our hidden past through a visitor attraction allowing access to these underground wonders via canal boats and underground lifts, providing the funding can be found one day.

Step Shaft Canal Basin below the Wrens Nest, photo by G. Worton

Chris Broughton
Geologist
Wolverhampton Art Gallery