Age and Origin of the Lough Neagh Clays

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Abstract
In the years 1918 and 1919 the Department for the Development of Mineral Kesources made an attempt to solve the problem of the concealed extension of the Tyrone Coalfield by putting down a bore near Coalisland. One of the secondary results obtained from a study of the cores was an approximate solution of the old question of the age of the Lough Neagh Clays. These clays, as is fairly generally known, occupy the ground around Lough Neagh in the North of Ireland; but, being for the most part at a very low level, and covered by a thick mantle of drift, they are poorly exposed. Previous to 1875, and recently to a less extent, they were exploited for pottery purposes by means of open and bell-shaped pits, and E. T. Hardman records a number of sections obtained in this way. The only organic remains obtained from these pits were fragments of wood and woody tissue so highly carbonized as to be quite unidentifiable, and affording no trustworthy evidence of age. From general considerations, such as their superposition on the basaltic lavas, and the fact that they are overlain by the glacial drift, Hardman concluded (but apparently not without misgivings) that the clays were Pliocene and laid down during a period of greater extension of the present lake. The evidence now available relegates them to the Older Tertiary, and indicates that their deposition was previous to the Miocene folding and faulting, so that their apparent association with the lake may be

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