For several years past this subject has been upon his mind, during which time he has fully availed himself of the contents of the Forestal Archives belonging to the Middle Ages, and appropriated all the information, as he believes, which the neighbourhood itself affords.
He respectfully submits the produce to the perusal of those gentlemen and friends who may favour these pages with their attention.
In coming before them for the third time, he cannot retire from so interesting a neighbourhood without requesting them to consider this as his final mark of appreciation and gratitude for the invariable kindness they have so long shown him.
H. G. N.
April, 1866.
THE OLD “BLACK COUNTRY”
of gloucestershire;
or,
an historical relation of the mining and
making of iron in the forest of dean,
from the earliest times.
If there be one circumstance more than another that has conferred celebrity on the Forest of Dean, it is the remote origin, perpetuation, and invariably high repute of its iron works. Uniting these characteristics in one, it probably surpasses every other spot in Great Britain.
In the author’s former “historical account” of this neighbourhood, he gave all the information he had then collected relative to the mining and making of iron therein. Since that time, he has greatly extended his investigations, especially [1] amongst the records of the Court of Exchequer. The result is, that he believes he is now enabled to present to the public the most complete description that has yet appeared of the manufacture of iron during the Middle Ages, detailing, in the first place, all the particulars he has gathered of the operations of the primitive miner, or iron worker, and
proceeding, in chronological order, to the present time.
In the year 1780, wrote Mr. Wyrrall, in his valuable MS. on the ancient iron works of the Forest:—