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roach, n.2

DRAFT REVISION June 2010

Brit. /rt/, U.S. /rot/  Forms: 15 roche, 16-18 roch, 16- roach. [Variant of ROCHE n.¹, frequently distinguished in form in the senses below.] 

    1. Brit. regional. Mining. A seam or bed. Also roach of coal. Obs.

1653 E. MANLOVE Liberties & Customes Lead-mines Derby 258 Soletrees, Roach, and Ryder. 1677 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 12 896 It was found upon the rising grounds (where the signs of the Cole, and the Cole it self came near the day) that there lay another Roach of Cole at a certain depth under it. 1686 R. PLOT Nat. Hist. Staffs. iii. 147 He shewed me a level of 35 yards of roach. 1704 London Gaz. No. 4008/4, 220 Acres, in which are great Quantities of Roch of Coal, now open. 1747 W. HOOSON Miners Dict. sig. Qijb, I have likewise heard of other Veins discovered after the same manner; as also in Fields of Grass lying near the Roch. 1836 R. FURNESS Astrologer II., Roach, Rag-pump, Rider.

    2. a. Brit. regional. An earthy, gritty, or coarsely textured rock. Cf. ROCHE n.¹ 5.

1798 J. KEIR Min. Staffordsh. in S. Shaw Hist. Staff. 118 (table) Red-coloured roach. [Note] Roach is a coarse ferruginous earth or clay, differently coloured and veined, red and yellow. 1809 Monthly Mag. Dec. 467/2 For basaltes..is remarkably subject to be decomposed by the action of water and air, and to fall into a powder, or coarse clay, called Roach, consisting..of argillaceous, siliceous, and ferruginous, particles. 1831 J. HODGSON in J. Raine Mem. (1858) II. 213 The same sort of conglomerate rock as that at the foot of Ulswater, and which the country people there [in 1799] called roach. 1920 A. H. FAY Gloss. Mining & Mineral Industry 573/2 Roach (Eng.),..2. A rock; refuse gritty stone.

    b. A bed of white limestone in the upper Jurassic strata of southern England; a variety of Portland stone obtained from this bed. Freq. attrib. in roach bed.

1813 Monthly Mag. Jan. 481/2 In the adjoining quarry immediately under the cap (4) is Roach (a mass of the fragments of oyster shells compressed and cemented in a very hard stone), six feet thick, upon a bed of the best saleable stone nine feet thick. 1839 Civil Engineer & Architect's Jrnl. 2 375/2 The roach beds are always incorporated with the freestone beds that invariably lie below them. 1873 Manuf. & Builder Jan. 22/2 The best [concrete] is to be made from hard, coarse-grained sandstone, or from some of the beds of the oolite, as..from the roach beds of the Portland stone. 1887 T. MONK Specif. Patent 1264 1 The roach or rag of Portland stone, at present a wasted natural product. 1911 Encycl. Brit. XXII. 122/1 The Portland limestones have been much in demand for building purposes; at Portland the ‘Top Roach’, the ‘Whit Bed’ or top freestone, and the ‘Best Bed’..are the best known. 2003 Independent 20 Mar. I. 20/2 Structural mullions faced in roach-bed Portland stone. 2003 Guardian 24 May I. 13/7 The sculpture has five terraces, each in a different grade of stoneslate, topstone, roach, whitbed and basebedjust as they occur in the nearby quarries.

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