H. G. Nicholls

“ Before the mouth of the furnace lyeth a great bed of sand, where they make furrows of the fashion they desire to cast their iron: into these, when the receivers are full, they let in their mettal, which is made so very fluid by the violence of the fire that it not only runs to a considerable distance, but stands afterwards boiling a great while. ”

“ It is impossible to mistake them for common cinders; nor do they resemble the slag of the modern smelting furnace. In fact, they are sui generis, and can only be met with where the manufacture of iron was anciently carried on. ”

“ Sows of Iron are the long pieces of cast iron as they run into the sand immediately from the furnace; thus called from the appearance of this and the shorter pieces which are runned into smaller gutters made in the same sand, from the resemblance they have to a sow lying on her side with her pigs at her dugs. These are for working up in the forges; but it is usual to cast other sows of iron of very great size to lay in the walls of the furnaces as beams to support the great strain of the work. ”

“ In the Forest of Dean and thereabouts, the iron is made at this day of cinders, being the rough and offal thrown by in the Romans’ time; they then having only foot blasts to melt the iron stone; but now, by the force of a great wheel that drives a pair of bellows twenty feet long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders, which could not be forced from it by the Roman foot blast. ”

“ Annal’s pits, on the eastern side of the Forest, constitute that exceedingly important range of mining operations, from which the Cinderford furnaces have long obtained their chief supply of iron ore. These are four in number, having a height of 43 feet, an extreme breadth of 14 feet, that of the hearth being 6 feet. They make 500 tons every week of the finest hot-blast iron. ”

“ Lancashire ore, which is brought to Newnham by sea, furnishes the principal supply; the mine found in the Forest being either too scanty to answer the expense of raising it, or when raised too difficult of fusion, and consequently too consumptive of fuel, to allow the common use of it.
“When the furnace is at work, about twenty tons a week are reduced to pig iron; in this state it is carried to the forges, where about eight tons a week are hammered out into bars, ploughshares, &c., ready for the smith.” ”

“ Moreover, there is yet a most great benefit to the kingdom in general by the sow iron made of the ironstone and Roman cinders in the Forest of Dean, for that metal is of a most gentle, pliable, soft nature, easily and quickly to be wrought into manufacture, over what any other iron is, and it is the best in the known world ”

“ A few cast-iron fire-backs have been noticed in some of the old houses in the vicinity of the Forest, but none have an earlier date on them. The cast-iron grave-slabs found in the ancient iron-making districts of Surrey and Sussex do not occur here. He also observes that “although he had carefully examined every spot and relic in Dean Forest likely to denote the site of Dud Dudley’s enterprising but unfortunate experiment of making pig-iron with pit-coal,” no remains had been found. ”

“ In such finerys they first put their piggs of iron, placing three or four of them together behind the fire, with a little of one end thrust into it, where softening by degrees they stir and work them with long barrs of iron till the mettal runs together in a round masse or lump, which they call an half bloome: this they take out, and giving it a few strokes with their sledges, they carry it to a great weighty hammer, raised likewise by the motion of a water wheel, where, applying it dexterously to the blows, they presently beat it into a thick short square ”

“ Dam Plate is a large flat plate of cast iron placed on its edge against the front of the furnace, with a stone cut sloping and placed on the inside. This plate has a notch on the top for the cinder or scruff to run off, and a place at the side to discharge the metal at casting.
“The Shaft of a wheel is a large round beam having the wheel fixed near the one end of it, and turning upon gudgeons or centres fixed in the two ends.
“The Furnace House I take to be what we call the casting-house, where the metal runs out of the furnace into the sand. ”

“ Our Lord the King hath a mine in the bailiwick of Magna Dene, and he takes from each workman who shall gain every three days three semes of mine ore, 1d. per week. And when a mine is first of all found, our Lord the King shall have one man working with the other workman in the mine, and hire him for 2d. a day, and he shall have such profit as he may find by the one workman. Item, our Lord the King shall have from thence each week, six semes of mine ore, which is called ‘Lawe ore.’ And he shall give for this to the workmen VId. ”

“ No account of the production of iron in the Forest of Dean can be called complete which does not include some description of the p. 65“laws and privileges,” the “customs and franchises” of the original operatives by whom the mine ore was obtained. As the miners themselves invariably refer to the “Book of Dennis” and the seventeen orders of their court of mine law for all authoritative information respecting their guild, or fraternity of free minership, the reader is furnished with the following summary of their contents. ”

“ Another remunerative iron mine, opened on the western side of the forest, is the Easter iron mine. p. 64It has three shafts sunk upon it, 100, 113, and 118 yards deep respectively. The first of these, and the only one in work, at which a light steam-engine of 14 horse power is used, communicates with “the old men’s workings,” though none of their tools have been found in them. About fifty men and boys are employed in this mine, from which upwards of 1,000 tons of ore are procured each month. ”

“ Mushet represents, “at Tintern the furnace charge for forge pig iron was generally composed of a mixture of seven-eighths of Lancashire iron ore and one-eighth part of a lean calcareous sparry iron ore, from the Forest of Dean, called flux, the average yield of which mixture was fifty per cent. of iron. When in full work, Tintern Abbey charcoal furnace made weekly from twenty-eight to thirty tons of charcoal forge pig iron, and consumed forty dozen sacks of charcoal; so that sixteen sacks of charcoal were consumed in making one ton of pigs.” ”

“ Cinder Shovels, iron shovels for taking up the cinders into the boxes, both to measure them and to fill the furnace.
“Moulding Ship, an iron tool fixed on a wooden handle, so formed as to make the gutters in the sand for casting the pig and sow iron.
“Casting Ladles, made hollow like a dish, with a lip to lade up the liquid iron for small castings.
“Wringers, large long bars of iron to wring the furnace, that is to clear it of the grosser and least fluid cinder which rises on the upper surface, and would there coagulate and soon prevent the furnace from working aright. ”

“ They suggest a tax “6d. at first, for fifteen bushells,” adding “that they were informed that there is carryed out yearly at least 4000 dozen; and there is now lying at Newnham a small vessell to transport some for Ireland. There must needs be a Prohibition to carry out of the Forrest any cinders, least his Maty’s owne works should need them in tyme.” [47a]
Reasons so carefully analyzed for inducing the Crown to take in hand iron making at Park End, deserved a better fate. But the king had irons enough in the fire, without becoming a manufacturer of iron in the Forest of Dean. ”

“ Most of these localities present traces of long continued iron manufacture, especially St. Wonnarth’s, Whitchurch, Bishopswood, and Flaxley, where the energetic proprietress, Mrs. Boevey, is said by Sir R. Atkyns to have had (c. A.D. 1712) “a furnace for casting of iron, and three forges.” Charcoal is the only fuel of which any indications remain, the coppice woods being in several instances preserved from p. 50which it used to be obtained, and the furnaces are shown to have been invariably situated where waterpower was at command. ”

“ The quantity of charcoal required is so considerable that the furnace cannot be kept in blow or working more than nine months successively, the wheels which work the bellows and hammers being turned by a powerful stream of water. ”

“ The fact of their presenting no trace of engineering skill, or of the use of any kind of machinery, is conclusive of their remote antiquity. Nor are there any traces of gunpowder having been employed in them; but this, Mr. John Taylor says, was not resorted to for such purposes earlier than 1620, when some German miners, brought over by Prince Rupert, used it at Ecton, in Staffordshire.
It is the unanimous opinion of the neighbourhood that these caves owe their origin to the predecessors of that peculiar order of operatives known as “the free miners of the Forest of Dean;” ”

“ After they have provided their ore, their first work is to calcine it, which is done in kilns, much after the fashion of our ordinary lime kilns; these they fill up to the top with coal and ore untill it be full, and so, putting fire to the bottom, they let it burn till the coal be wasted, and then renew the kilnes with fresh ore and coal. ”

“ It has been presented by the regarders that many ‘forgiæ errantes’ have been and are still in the Forest, and that those who have held and still hold them commit many evils in the Forest, above the wood and beneath it, both by injuring the trees as well as by means of their forges, great detriment being done in the Forest by them and their wood colliers. ”

“ Every mining appurtenance is retained, only somewhat altered in shape, and that, perhaps, not for the better, be it cap, “bellis,” or general attire. Only the beard is absent, but then there are the shoes.
On several occasions they conferred their freedom on the leading gentry of the neighbourhood. By their orders they also sanctioned the sinking of pits, as distinguished from levels, extending the interval between mine and mine from “within so much space that ye miner may stand and cast ridding and p. 69stones soe farr from him with a bale as the manner is,” to five hundred yards. ”

“ About 400 hands are engaged at them, and turn out about 1,000 boxes of tin-plate every week, besides a quantity of sheet-iron. The materials supplied to these works from the Forest of Dean are pig-iron, coal, fire-bricks and clay, fire-stone and fire-sand, and cordwood for conversion into charcoal. Lydney has long been famed for its ironworks, which at one time belonged to the Talbot family. ”

“ We do not entreat your lordship for any other or more easy price than that your lordship directs the sale of it to others; only we humbly pray for some preferment in the opportunity of the place where the woods lie, and in the quantity, as it may answer in some portion to our wants. ”

“ If it is assumed that this furnace made upon an average annually 200 tons of pig iron, and that the quantity of slag run from the furnace was equal to one-half the quantity of iron made, we shall have 100 tons of cinders annually, for a period of from 80 to 100 years. ”

“ Bellows Boards—Not very different from the present dimensions.
“Water Troughs—scooped out of the solid timber. This shows the great simplicity of these times, not 150 years ago.
“The Hutch, or as it is now corruptly called the Witch, a wide covered drain below the furnace-wheel to carry off the water from it, usually arched, but here only covered with timbers to support the rubbish and earth thrown upon it.
p. 39“Cambs are iron cogs fixed in the shaft to work the bellows as the wheel turns round. ”

“ Another instance occurs to his recollection of a little image of brass, about four inches long, which was then found in the cinders in the same place, being a very elegant female figure in a dancing attitude, and evidently antique by the drapery.”
Numerous other Roman vestiges, on every side of the Forest, may be adverted to. No great distance from Whitchurch, and immediately adjoining this neighbourhood on the north, is the site of Ariconium, marked by numerous traces of the hardware manufacture of that people. Near Lydney and Tidenham, discoveries of Roman relics have been extensively made. ”

“ It would appear, too, that the ore was then measured by the bushel, as it has been ever since, owing, of course, to its loose powdery nature, which seems, therefore, to have been the sort preferred.
The other singular particulars descriptive of “lawe ore,” &c., are noticed elsewhere, in the second portion of this work, containing the “Book of Dennis.” ”