The
Wealden iron industry
was located in the
Weald
of south-eastern
England
. It was formerly an important industry, producing a large proportion of the
bar iron
made in
England
in the 16th century and most British
cannon
until about 1770. Ironmaking in the Weald used
ironstone
from various
clay
beds, and was fuelled by
charcoal
made from trees in the heavily wooded landscape. The industry in the Weald declined when ironmaking began to be fuelled by
coke
made from
coal
, which does not occur accessibly in the area.
Resources
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Iron ore in the form of
siderite
, commonly known as iron stone or historically as mine, occurs in patches or bands in the
Cretaceous
clays of the Weald. Differing qualities of ore were extracted and mixed by experienced
smelters
to give the best results. Sites of opencast quarries survive from the pre-Roman and Roman eras, but medieval ore extraction was mainly done by digging a series of minepits about five metres in diameter and up to twelve metres deep with material being winched up in baskets suspended from a wooden tripod. This was less destructive of the land as spoil from one pit was used to backfill the previous pit allowing continued land use.
The fuel for smelting was
charcoal
, which needed to be produced as close as possible to the smelting sites because it would crumble to dust if transported far by cart over rough tracks. Wood was also needed for pre-roasting the ore on open fires, a process which broke down the lumps or nodules and converted the carbonate into oxide. Large areas of woodland were available in the Weald and
coppicing
woodlands could provide a sustainable source of wood. Sustainable charcoal production for a post-medieval
blast furnace
required the timber production from a 3 miles (4.8 km) radius of a furnace in a landscape that was a quarter to a third wooded. Forging and finishing of the iron from
bloomeries
and blast furnaces also required large quantities of charcoal and was usually carried out at a separate site.
Water power became important with the introduction of blast furnaces and
finery forges
in the late medieval period. Blast furnaces needed to operate continuously for as long as possible and a series of ponds were often created in a valley to give a sustainable flow for the
waterwheel
. A campaign, as the production run was known, usually ran from October through to late spring when streams began to dry up, although Lamberhurst Furnace driven by the
River Teise
ran continuously for more than three years in the 1740s. Finery forges with three or four waterwheels to drive bellows and hammers needed more water than a furnace at times, although continuity was not as important. They tended to be sited downstream from a furnace if they were in the same valley. Ponds were created by building a dam known as a pond bay, which often served as a road, across one of the many valleys in the undulating Wealden landscape.
[1]
In 1754 one furnace was so drought-stricken that its manager considered hiring workmen to turn the wheel as a
treadmill
.
[2]
This need for continuous water power was an incentive in the development of the
water-returning engine
, a waterwheel driven by water raised by a steam engine pump.
Prehistoric ironmaking
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]
So far only about two dozen sites have been identified where iron was made before the
Roman invasion
, mostly scattered across
East Sussex
and the
Vale of Kent
. A large site at
Broadfield, Crawley
is the westernmost place where smelting has been ascertained, although there is a possible site associated with an Iron Age enclosure at Piper's Copse near
Northchapel
in the western Weald. Continuity of pottery styles from the Iron Age into the early Roman period makes precise dating of many sites to before or after the Roman conquest difficult. Carbon dating has identified a site at Cullinghurst Wood,
Hartfield
to between 350 and 750 BC.
[3]
During his
invasions of Britain
in 55 and 54 BC Julius Caesar noted iron production near the coast, possibly at known sites at
Sedlescombe
and Crowhurst Park near
Hastings
.
Roman ironmaking
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View of the 13th fairway of
Beauport Park
golf course, beneath which are remains of the Roman ironworks.
Beauport Park
, where evidence has been found of probably the third largest iron works in the whole
Roman empire
.
[4]
The
Romans
made full use of the brown- and ochre-coloured stone in the
Weald
, and many of their roads there are the means of transport for the ore, and were extensively metalled with slag from iron smelting.
[5]
The sites of about 113
bloomeries
have been identified as Roman, mainly in East
Sussex
.
[6]
The
Weald
was in this period one of the most important iron-producing regions in
Roman Britain
. Excavations at a few sites have produced tiles of the
Classis Britannica
, suggesting that they were actually run by, or were supplying iron to this Roman fleet. Total iron production has been estimated at 750 tons per year, but under 200 tons per year after 250 AD.
[7]
Medieval
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The invasion and settlement of the Weald by
Saxons
seems to have brought a complete end to the Romano-British iron industry. No evidence of iron smelting has been found after the end of Roman rule until the ninth century when a primitive bloomery was built at Millbrook on
Ashdown Forest
, with a small hearth for reheating the blooms nearby. The date of this site has been established by
radiocarbon
and
archaeomagnetic
methods. The technology used there was similar to a slightly earlier furnace excavated in the eastern Netherlands, indicating that knowledge of Romano-British methods had been completely lost and replaced by the Saxons' own method. Evidence of forging of iron blooms in settlements close to the South Downs does indicate that smelting may have been going on at other undiscovered sites. It was usual for settlements concentrated along the Downs to have outlying parcels of land in the Weald for summer grazing. It is likely that smelting was carried out during the summer and the iron blooms taken back to the main settlement to work on in the winter.
[8]
In all some 30 unpowered medieval bloomery sites are known in the Weald, but most of these remain undated. Accounts survive of the operation of just one, at
Tudeley
near
Tonbridge
in the mid-14th century.
[9]
Powered bloomeries
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]
From about the 14th century,
water-power
began to be applied to
bloomeries
, but fewer than ten such sites are suspected.
The introduction of the blast furnace
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]
A new ironmaking process was devised in the
Namur
region of what is now
Belgium
in the 15th century. This spread to the
pays de Bray
on the eastern boundary of
Normandy
and then to the Weald. The new
smelting
process involved a
blast furnace
and
finery forge
. It was introduced in about 1490 at Queenstock in
Buxted
parish.
[10]
The number of ironworks increased greatly from about 1540.
The mature industry
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Nearly 180 sites in all were used for this process, having a furnace, a forge or both between the 15th century and 18th century. Waterpower was the means of operating the
bellows
in the
blast furnaces
and for operating
bellows
and
helve hammers
in
finery forges
. Scattered through the Weald are ponds still to be found called ’Furnace Pond’ or ’Hammer Pond’. The iron was used for making household utensils,
nails
and
hinges
; and for
casting
cannon
. The first blast furnace was recorded at
Buxted
in 1490.
The industry was at its peak towards the end of
Queen Elizabeth I
's reign. Most works were small, but at
Brenchley
one ironmaster
employed 200 men
. Most of them would have been engaged in mining ore and cutting wood (for
charcoal
), as the actual ironworks only required a small workforce. The wars fought during the reign of
Henry VIII
increased the need for
armaments
, and the Weald became the centre of an
armaments industry
. Cast-iron cannon were made in the
Weald
from 1543 when
Buxted
's
Ralf Hogge
cast the first iron cannon for his unlikely employer: a
Sussex vicar
who was gunstonemaker to the king.
In the 16th century and the early 17th century, the
Weald
was a major source of
iron
for manufacture in
London
, peaking at over 9000 tons per year in the 1590s.
[11]
However, after 1650, Wealden production became increasingly focused on the production of
cannon
; and
bar iron
was only produced for local consumption. This decline may have begun as early as the 1610s, when Midland ironware began to be sold in
London
. Certainly after
Swedish
iron began to be imported in large quantities after the
Restoration
, Wealden
bar iron
seems to have been unable to compete in the London market.
Cannon production was a major activity in the Weald until the end of the
Seven Years' War
, but a cut in the price paid by the
Board of Ordnance
drove several Wealden
ironmasters
into bankruptcy. They were unable to match the much lower price that was acceptable to the
Scottish
Carron Company
, whose fuel was
coke
. A few ironworks continued operating on a very small scale. With no local source of mineral coal, the Wealden iron industry was unable to compete with the new coke-fired ironworks of the
Industrial Revolution
. The last to close was the forge at
Ashburnham
. Little survives of the furnace and forge buildings, although there are still scores of the industry's hammer and furnace ponds scattered throughout the Weald.
[12]
Steel
production was never widespread in the Weald, with most high quality steel being imported from Spain, the Middle East, or Germany. A steel forge was built upstream from Newbridge Furnace on
Ashdown Forest
around 1505 but had ceased production by 1539. The Sydney family, with mills at
Robertsbridge
forge and at
Sandhurst
in Kent, produced steel using skilled German workers, but faced strong competition from German suppliers. In the 17th century a steel forge existed at
Warbleton
in Sussex.
[13]
St Paul's Cathedral
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]
The Lamberhurst Foundry is believed to have been the maker in 1710?14 of some of the earliest cast-iron railings produced in England, which they made for
St Paul's Cathedral
, despite the objections of
Christopher Wren
, who did not want a fence around the Cathedral at all, and said that if there had to be one it should be of wrought rather than cast iron.
[14]
The railings surrounded the cathedral, including seven gates. It weighed two hundred
tons
and cost six
pence
a pound.
[14]
The total cost was £11,202.
[14]
No further railings are known to have been cast in the Weald.
[15]
Other early uses of cast iron railings were at
Cambridge Senate House
and at
St Martin-in-the-Fields
, London.
[14]
See also
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References
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]
- ^
Hodgkinson, J S (2009).
The Wealden Iron Industry
. Stroud: The History Press. pp. 9?55.
ISBN
978-0-7524-4573-1
.
- ^
Straker, Ernest (1969) [1931].
Wealden Iron
. pp. 72?73.
- ^
Hodgkinson, J S (2009).
The Wealden Iron Industry
. Stroud: The History Press. pp. 28?30.
ISBN
978-0-7524-4573-1
.
- ^
"Beauport Park, East Sussex"
.
OpenLearn
.
Open University
. 22 June 2006
. Retrieved
10 August
2013
.
- ^
Margary, Ivan D (1968).
Roman ways in the Weald
. Phoenix house.
ISBN
0-460-07742-2
.
- ^
Hodgkinson, J S (2009).
The Wealden Iron Industry
. Stroud: The History Press. p. 31.
ISBN
978-0-7524-4573-1
.
- ^
H. Cleere & D. Crossley,
Iron industry of the Weald
(2nd edn, Merton Priory Press, Cardiff, 1995), 79-84; based on work by H. F. Cleere, including 'Some operating parameters for Roman ironworks'
Inst Archaeol. Bull.
13 (1976), 233-46.
- ^
Hodgkinson, J S (2009).
The Wealden Iron Industry
. Stroud: The History Press. pp. 35?6.
ISBN
978-0-7524-4573-1
.
- ^
J. S. Hodgkinson & C.H.C. Whittick, 'The Tudeley ironworks accounts'
Wealden Iron
2 ser. 18 (1998), 7-38
- ^
Awty, Brian; Whittick, Christopher (2002).
"The Lordship of Canterbury, iron-founding at Buxted, and the continental antecedents of cannon-founding in the Weald"
.
Sussex Archaeological Collections
.
140
: 71?81.
doi
:
10.5284/1085896
.
- ^
P. W. King, 'The production and consumption of bar iron in early modern England and Wales'
Econ. Hist. Rev.
58(1) (2005), 1-9.
- ^
Pearce, H (2012).
Hammer and Furnace Ponds - Relics of the Wealden Iron Industry
. Lewes: Pomegranate Press.
ISBN
978-1-907242-15-1
.
- ^
Hodgkinson, J S (2009).
The Wealden Iron Industry
. Stroud: The History Press. p. 62.
ISBN
978-0-7524-4573-1
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Railings M.209:1-1976
,
Victoria and Albert Museum
, 2013. Retrieved 31 October 2013.
- ^
Gerald Kenneth Geerlings
(1957), "Cast Iron: history",
Metal Crafts in Architecture
, I.B. Tauris, p. 101
External links
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