The Shineton Shales of the Wrekin District: with Notes on their Development in other parts of Shropshire and Herefordshire

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Abstract
The Shineton Shales crop out on the south and south-west of the Wrekin in a more or less rhomboidal area, extending for a distance of about 9 miles from just north of Maddock's Hill to Shadwell Coppice (Acton Burnell Park), and from the neighbourhood of Dryton, 2½ miles south to the Harley-Kenley Road section near Stone House. The area comprises parts of the following 6-inch Ordnance Survey quarter-sheets:—Shropshire XLII N.E, S.E., S.W.; XLIII N.W.; XLIX N.E.; L N.E., N.W. Probably the earliest reference to the geology of the area here described is contained in Murchison's ‘Silurian System’ 1839. All rocks of this district older than the May Hill (Llandovery) Sandstone were apparently regarded as being of Caradoc Sandstone age, and were thus described in Chapter xix; in particular, on p. 233, he stated:— ‘The stratified deposits through which the trap rocks of the Wrekin protrude are of the same age as the Caradoc Sandstone.’ Aveline & Salter (1854) described all the shales of the area— comprising those seen at Acton Burnell, Cressage Park, Harnage, and at Shineton—as of Lower Llandeilo and Bala age (the Caradoc Sandstone of the ‘Silurian System’), and they were recognized as being overlain by the Hoar Edge Grit at Harnage and Cound. The authors recorded from Shineton the three fossils Olenus sp., Agnostus sp., and Asaphus sp., and the last-named was noted as occurring in some abundance. In 1867, Salter referred the Shineton Shales to the ‘top of the Llandeilo Flags proper’ (p. 203; but in