H. G. Nicholls

“ The names of Birt and Teague now occasionally appeared, combined with attempts to retrieve the character of the locality for iron making; but all failed: and Mr. Mushet’s famous declaration that physical difficulties would for ever prevent its success, in connexion with such repeated failures, seemed for several years to have sealed up the prospects of the Forest; but at length a glimmer of light broke through the darkness, and it was reserved for an individual of Forest birth to prove that the greatest theorists may arrive at wrong practical conclusions. ”

“ Isaiah Teague took the same view, and further supported the recommendation that greater facilities should be given, not only to the mineowners to build cottages for their men, but also that the operatives themselves should be enabled to buy small plots of land for the purpose, they being now frequently obliged to live far distant from their places of work, there being few, if any, houses situated near them. These witnesses, as well as several others, agreed in stating that it was inexpedient to have deer in the Forest, as unsettling the habits of the people, and encouraging poaching. ”

“ The persons who inhabit the cottages are chiefly poor labouring people who are induced to seek habitations in the Forest for the advantages of living rent free, and having the benefit of pasturage for a cow or a few sheep, and of keeping pigs in the woods; but many encroachments have been made by people of substance. The cattle of the cottagers are impounded when the Forest is driven by the keepers, as all other cattle are; and when the owners take them from the pound, paying the usual fees to the keepers, they turn them again into the Forest, having no other means of maintaining them. ”

“ Briavel’s, being upwards of twenty-one years of age and having worked a year and a day in a coal or iron mine or stone-quarry within the said hundred, should alone have the right to hold or dispose of such works, a register of all such persons being kept as “free miners.” It suppressed all claims to pit timber, with all “customs,” and assigned to the Commissioners under the Act the duty of fixing rents and royalties for twenty-one years, and to the gaveller power to limit and regulate as well as to enter and survey all works which might be re-awarded or galed. ”

“ A free miner is briefly defined to be “such as have lawfully worked at coal a year and a day.” A foreigner selling coal at Hereford for less than 13s. per ton was to be summoned, or abide the consequences of a general “forbid.” Should there be at any time more than a sufficiency of coal for the trade on the Wye, the barge-owners were to employ the services of the miners, or be fined according to their wages. A horse-load to the Wye was fixed at 2 cwt. and a quarter for 6d., ten such making a ton, to be weighed, if required, under a forfeit of 2s. ”

“ Nightingales are not numerous in the Forest, although they abound in the neighbourhood. They do not like its depths, or large trees hollow below; but prefer a thick close cover, and the vicinity of a road or path where the bushes are low and thick: but I never heard one in the middle of the Forest. Although a country like this seems unsuited to the wheatear, as preferring the Downs of Sussex, &c., still they come here in the spring, and are generally seen by the roads, or on stone walls in which they build their nests, and even in the heaps of stones, as also in the rails of bark. ”

“ One half of the Forest population is understood to be employed at the coal-works, a fourth part at those of iron, whose red dresses make them easily known, and the remaining portion are employed in the quarries and woods, &c.
Horses of a bad breed, donkeys, mules, cattle, sheep, pigs, and geese abound, owing to the free pasture afforded by the open Forest, the three former having been used for many generations in carrying iron-mine, coal, charcoal, &c. Farming operations are necessarily very limited. ”

“ Occasionally the passage divides and unites again, or abruptly stops, turning off at a sharp angle, or changing its level, where rude steps cut in the rock show the mode by which the old miners ascended or descended; whilst sometimes the rounds of ladders have been found, semi-carbonized by age. These excavations abound on every side of the Forest, wherever the iron makes its appearance, giving the name of “Meand” or mine to such places. Of the deeper workings, one of the most extensive occurs on the Lining Wood Hill above Mitcheldean, and is well worth exploring. ”

“ T. Rudge, at the beginning of this century, “is still carried on, and the metal is esteemed peculiarly good; but its goodness does not arise from any extraordinary qualities in the ore, but from the practice of working the furnace and forges with charcoal wood, without any mixture of pit coal. 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. ”

“ He says that “the sorts of wood or timber delivered to the miners were oak and beech, and none other; chiefly oak in the summer, more pits being sunk in the summer than in the winter, and the keepers having the bark; more beech is allowed in the winter than oak. But oak timber is necessary, and is always allowed, for sinking the pits, and for making what the miners call the gateway, or gangway, from the body of coal to the pit, and also for the gutters in the levels, for draining off the water ”

“ Machen’s Notes inform us that in the autumn of 1846 “there was the most abundant crop of Spanish chesnuts we have ever had, and they ripen well, but the people injure the trees to get them. No acorns at all—there are some on the Turkey oaks. The fruit of most kinds has failed this year, as well as the potatoes; but of some kinds, such as chesnuts, grapes, blackberries, the crop is abundant. The spruce firs are looking very bad; many of them are nearly dead.”
Except as respects the granting of additional coal and iron gales, the succeeding year of 1847 may be passed over. ”

“ There is a statement of Lord Nelson’s relating to this Forest, written about the year 1802, [87] in which he says: “Nothing in it can grow self-sown, for the deer bark all the young trees. Vast droves of hogs are allowed to go into the woods in the autumn, and if any fortunate acorn escapes their search, and takes root, then flocks of sheep are allowed to go into the Forest, and they bite off the tender shoot.” ”

“ That there are two great roads leading across the Forest, which have been made and kept in repair by the produce of timber felled and sold for that purpose, and on which by far the greater part of the expense for roads has been bestowed; the one enters the Forest at Mitcheldean, and proceeds quite across the Forest to Coleford, the other leads from Little Dean to Coleford. These two roads have been made chiefly with a view to the convenience of the public, being the principal roads from Gloucester to South Wales ”

“ That all the wood or timber which shall hereafter grow upon the remaining 13,000 acres shall absolutely belong to his Majesty, discharged from all estovers for ever, and pannage for twenty years next ensuing. That the whole wastle soil be re-afforested, and subject to the Forest laws; but that the severity of the Forest laws be taken off from the lands in several, belonging to the freeholders and inhabitants within the said Forest, they themselves being contented to serve his Majesty, according to their several offices and places, as formerly at the Forest courts. ”

“ Writing upon the subject of the Forest collieries, about the year 1779, Mr. Rudder remarks in his History of the county,—“The pits are not deep, for when the miners find themselves much incommoded with water, they sink a new one, rather than erect a fire engine, which might answer the expense very well, yet there is not one of them in all this division. They have indeed two or three pumps worked by cranks, that in some measure answer the intention.” ”

“ The most wooded parts of the Forest were to be selected, and where the soil was best fitted for the growth of timber, avoiding the coalworks, and leaving out all necessary roads to be made and kept in repair by turnpikes, unless required for the carriage of timber only; the rights of commoners were to be discharged by allotting an equitable extent of land suitable for pasture, and the colliers to pay for all pit timber ”

“ 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 ironstone, 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. And in the Forest of Dean and thereabouts, and as high as Worcester, there are great and infinite quantities of these cinders ”

“ From the Acorn Patch (the last of the old plantations) a large quantity of young oaks have been transplanted into the open parts of the Forest and the upper part of Russell’s Enclosure. The trees drawn out are thriving, and many of them grow faster than the trees remaining in the Acorn Patch. There is a great quantity of holly and other underwood scattered on the parts where the trees are planted, and which serves for shelter and protection, and the soil is very good. ”

“ It says little respecting this Forest, merely alluding to it in common with the other royal forests, as fitted to take its place in supplying timber to the navy, which required 88,659 loads annually, a quantity so large as to be equivalent to 1,000 acres of oak a century old. In their present state the Royal Forests could not supply a tenth part of this amount, and would always be deficient unless 1,000 acres were planted every year for the next 100 years, by which time the above quantity might be annually felled. ”

“ When the plantations were first made, they became, even in the centre of them, well stocked with partridges; but as the woods grew up they all disappeared. Pheasants were turned out by me at Whitemead, and soon spread over the whole Forest. At one time there was a good stock, but lately they are much reduced. There are a great variety of woodpeckers, which do not, I think, hurt sound trees, but rather those which they find already decaying. Fieldfares and redwings come in great numbers. ”

“ A third part of the profits of the undertaking belonged to the King, whose gaveller called at the works every Tuesday “between Mattens and Masse,” and received one penny from each miner, the fellowship supplying the Crown with twelve charges of ore per week at twelve pence, or three charges of coal at one penny. Timber was allowed for the use of the works above and below ground. Only such persons as had been born and were abiding in the Forest were to “visit” the mines, in working which the distance of a stone’s throw was always to be kept, and property in them might be bequeathed. ”

“ He speaks of “a set of people called Forest free miners, who consider themselves as having a right to dig for coal in any part they please,” adding that “trees which die of themselves are considered as of no value to the Crown. A gentleman told me,” (he says,) “that in shooting on foot (for on horseback it cannot be seen, being hid by the fern, which grows a great height) , the trees of fifty years’ growth, fit for buildings, fencings, &c., are cut just above ground entirely through the bark, and in two years die,” so becoming a perquisite to the authorities. ”

“ The plants in Whitemead Park are thriving very well in all parts which are situated at a distance from the brook, but near to it they are very thin, stunted, and unhealthy, and are constantly killed down by spring frosts. Ash and fir trees have been planted amongst them, but with little success at present. The principal part of the large timber now in the Forest is about Park End, on Church Hill, Ivy More Head, Russell’s Enclosure, Park End Lodge Hill, and at the Lea Bailey. ”

“ Descending from the side of the hilly range on which the reader has been supposed to stand towards the middle of the Forest, a plain is reached varying in width from half a mile to little more than 100 yards, and forming a band round the somewhat elevated centre of the district. This circular valley or plain marks the outcrop of the middle series of coal seams, not less than ten in number, the principal ones being the Smith Coal, Lowery or Park End High Delf, Starkey, Rocky, and Upper and Lower Churchway. ”

“ Going about with guns, in numbers too formidable for the keepers to interfere, shooting the deer by day, and carrying them off at night, were by no means uncommon. Poachers of a poorer and more primitive stamp are said to have resorted to the expedient of dropping a heavy iron bar from where they had secreted themselves, on the projecting branch of an oak, so that it might fall across the neck of the deer which had come to browse beneath. ”

“ The ground of the Forest is more inclined to wood and cole than corn, yet they have enough of it too. The inhabitants are, some of them, a sort of robustic wild people, that must be civilized by good discipline and government. ”

“ Protheroe, in his evidence before the Dean Forest Commissioners, in 1832, relative to his thirty-two coal-pits, stated that “the depth of my principal pits at Park End and Bilson varies from about 150 to 200 yards; that of my new gales, for which I have engine licences, is estimated at from 250 to 300 yards. I have 12 steam engines varying from 12 to 140 horse power, 9 or 10 of which are at work, the whole amounting to 500 horse power; and I have licences for four more engines, two of which must be of very great power. ”