As an instance of the considerable extent to which the old cinders continued to be used in the iron furnaces round the Forest, the following abstract of
an indenture, found in Mr. Wyrrall’s collection, and dated 20th October, 1692, may be quoted:—
“Jephthah Wyrall, Gent., to Rd Avenant, Gent., and John Wheeler, Gent.
“Articles for the Sale of 10 thousand dozn of cinders, in certain grounds near Mr. Wyrall’s house, called the Correggio, the Limekiln Patch, the Long Sevens, and the Ockwal Field, if so many could be found there. The Price, 10 Pence the dozen, or 12 Bushels; 6 to be heaped and the other 6 even with the top of the Bushel, or hand-weaved. Such of them as should be taken to Bishopswood or Parkend to be measured by the Bushel used at Bishop’s wood Furnace; and such as should be carried to Blakeney Furnace by the Bushel used there. To be raised and fitted for carriage by Avenant and Whealer. To employ no persons in raising the cinders but such as Mr. Wyrall approves of. Mr. Wyrall to carry yearly as many cinders as he should please, not exceeding 250 Dozens, to Parkend, at 4s a dozen. Should carry to the banks of the river Wye, at 13d a Dozen such as should be used at Bishop’s Wood Furnace. Avenant and Whealer to get 800 dozn a year, and as many more as they shd please till the 10 Thousand Dozens should be raised: and pay for them yearly on the 1st day of May, and the 1st day of October; and should leave the ground as level and plain as usually is where cinders are gotten (which was promising nothing at all).”
According to a paper examined by Mr. Mushet, and referring probably to the year 1720 or 1730, the iron-making district of the Forest of Dean contained ten blast furnaces, viz., six in Gloucestershire, three in Herefordshire, and one at Tintern, making their total number just equal to that of the then iron-making district of Sussex. In Mr. Taylor’s map of Gloucestershire, published in 1777, iron furnaces, forges, or engines are indicated at Bishopswood, Lydbrook, the New Wear, Upper Red Brook, Park End, Bradley, and Flaxley. Yet only a small portion
of the mineral used at these works was obtained from the Dean Forest mines, if we may judge from the statement made by Mr. Hopkinson, in 1788, before the Parliamentary Commissioners, to the effect that “there is no regular iron mine work now carried on in the said Forest, but there were about twenty-two poor men who, at times when they had no other work to do, employed themselves in searching for and getting iron mine or ore in the old holes and pits in the said Forest, which have been worked out many years.” Such a practice is well remembered by the aged miners, the chief part of the ore used in the above-named furnaces having been brought by sea from Whitehaven. [54] Thus Mr. 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.” This furnace was, he believes, “the first charcoal furnace which in this country was blown with air compressed in iron cylinders.”
Flaxley was one of the very last places where iron was made in the old way. The Rev. T. Budge,
writing at the commencement of the present century, says of it:—
“The iron manufactory 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. At this time (28th Oct. 1802) a cessation has taken place for nearly a year. 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.”
Though these operations have been long given up, the furnace buildings removed, and the pools drained in which the water accumulated for driving the machinery, yet the old people of the neighbourhood still recollect when the Castiard’s Vale, now wholly devoted to the picturesque, resounded with the noise of engines. A solitary heap of Lancashire iron mine alone remains to show what was once operated upon at this spot.
The year 1795 marks the period when the manufacture of iron was resumed in the Forest by means of pit-coal cokes at Cinderford, the above date being preserved on an inscription stone in No. 1 furnace. “The conductors of the work succeeded,” in the