Reading an old geology book (1936) which has some interesting references to seams of coal at Amble:
Amble.—The exposures in the cliffs and on the foreshore for about a mile south of Warkworth Harbour provide the only good sections we have of beds low down in the Coal Measures. Several fossil-bands occur and a few coals, but the exact relationship of these seams to the coals south of the Hauxley Fault is very uncertain. Most of the sequence would appear to lie below the Bottom Coal of Broomhill.
.....The general dip is to the S.E., at angles varying from 3° to 8°. A coal, said to have been found many years ago in sewer cutting at the harbour, was reported to be 12 in. thick. It has been taken arbitrarily as the base of the Middle Coal Group. An 18-in. coal a short distance above is said to have been proved at the Gas Works, and again at the top of an old quarry 150 yards to the south. Nothing can now be seen of these coals or their associated strata. Not far above, however, the rock-section begins on the coast at the south pier beacon. Here are the Pan Rocks, yellowish, bedded sandstones forming a broad outcrop on the foreshore. At least 30 feet thick, they were once extensively quarried for water-filters, being coarse, gritty and pebbly, at least in the lower beds. Towards the top they are flaggy and highly false-bedded, and are covered by 12 to 15 feet of greenish shales.' These have small clay-ironstone concretions towards the base, and…..
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………fault of unknown throw, which can be traced seawards as far as low-water mark. Beyond this a sandstone was once quarried near Link House, and supplied much of the stone for building at Amble. It rests on a coal 2 ft. 3 in. thick (at one time wrought on the foreshore), and the lower parts are highly carbonaceous. Mr. Eckford states that in a small collection at Amble school are Gyracanthus spines, said to have been got near the base of a conglomeratic sandstone, where he himself found a fish-tooth and fragments of spines. The Link House sandstone forms the cliff for some distance southwards, and there are extensive outcrops on the foreshore; the upper beds, which lie in a series of folds, are false-bedded and lenticular, with several bands of shale. At the south end of the exposures a broad domed outcrop of sandstone covers a coal, locally 2 ft. 5 in. thick. This seam would certainly appear to lie under the higher beds of the Link House sandstone; it may even be the seam known at the north end of the cliff at the….
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