IX.—Note on an Unmapped Toadstone Bed in the Derbyshire Mountain Limestone

Extract

In the Summer of 1901 I found in a pasture, between Oxlow Rake and Cop Round (IX S.E.), some blocks of Toadstone in a bed of clay that has all the characteristics of decomposed Toad-stone. The clay was being dug for puddling a new mere, and the deposit is well known to natives. I traced the outcrop south-west to Starvehouse Mine, and my inference that the clay was decomposed Toadstone was soon verified by the Toadstone itself coming to day-light and replacing the clay. I did nothing more that year, but in the Summer of last year I continued to follow the bed, and have traced it as far as Bushy Heath House (XV N.E.), a distance of about two miles from its starting-point.

The outcrop starts as a clay bed, at the southern end of an enclosure called Old Moor (IX S.E.), at a point about 50 yards south-east of two old mine shafts, and where a spring issues from under the limestone scarp, at a height of 1,400 feet above mean sea-level (by aneroid). Thence it runs in a general south-west direction for half a mile, along a line of five springs at the base of the limestone escarpment, to the north wall of Starvehouse Mine (IX S.E.), which it cuts at an altitude of 1,500 feet.

There is no throw at the Starvehouse lode, and the bed contours round the point of Cop Round and crosses Dick Lane 30 yards from the summit gate (1,510 feet); from there it runs south-east with the dip of the limestone to Moss Rake (IX S.E.), the base passing just above the letter n of Piece Barn on the map. It reaches the lode at 1,350 feet.