“From these furnaces they bring the sows and piggs of iron, as they call them, to their forges; these are two sorts, though they stood together under the same roof; one they call their finery, and the other chafers: both of them are upon hearths, upon which they place great heaps of sea coal, and behind them bellows like those of the furnaces, but nothing near so large.
“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; this they put into the finery again, and heating it red hot, they work it under the same hammer till it comes to the shape of a bar in the middle, with two square knobs in the ends; last of all they give it other beatings in the chaffers, and more workings under the hammer, till they have brought their iron into barrs of several shapes, in which fashion they expose them to sale.
“All their principal iron undergoes the aforementioned preparations, yet for several other purposes, as for backs
of chimneys, hearths of ovens, and the like, they have a sort of cast iron, which they take out of the receivers of the furnace, so soon as it is melted, in great ladles, and pour it into the moulds of fine sand in like manner as they do cast brass and softer mettals; but this sort of iron is so very brittle, that, being heated with one blow of the hammer, it breaks all to pieces.”
No. VI.
Being Minutes, &c., of the Court of Mine Law.
“Forest of Deane to witt.Att a Court of Mine and Miners of Our Sovereign Lord the King, held att the Speech-ouse, in and for the Forest of Deane, on Tuesday the 13th day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-eight, before Christopher Bond, Esqr, and Thomas James, gentleman, deputyes to the Right Honourable Augustus, Earl of Berkeley, Constable of the Castle of St Briavels, in the County of Gloucester, Christopher Bond, Esqr, gaveller of the said mines, and Phillip Elly, deputy gaveller of the said mines.
“The names of the Jury.—Richard Powell, Simon Bannister, George Thomas, Frances Dutheridge, William Kerr, Richard Hawkins, Joseph Cooper, Samuel Kerr, Henry Roberts, William Meeke, Richard Tingle, James Teague.
“William Gagg otherwise Smith, and his Vearns, against James Bennett and his Vearns.
“I complaine against William Gagge and his Vearns for hindering our levell and doing of us willfull trespas, whereby we have sustained great damage, att a stone (lime) coale worke called Churchway, otherwise Turnbrooke, in the Hundred of Saint Briavels, (as this,) they hindered the levell, and deepwall they would not bring forward to our new pit that was then just downe. We leave this to the best proof & the order.I asked them the reason, and they told me it was to make coale scarce and men plenty; they went back sixteen or eighteen weeks into their scale, contrary to the rule and custom of all free miners beneath the wood with us; and likewise before, they hindered the levell in their new deepit. And wilfully more they cut up to their land gutter, and tooke in the water by a single sticken gutter in their backer deep pit, and turned it across the bottom of our deep pit into our air gutter, which we prepared for ourselves and
them, whereby our lamping the charks was swelled downe, and have destroyed the air, and filled our gateway with water and sludge, and very likely to destroy the levells, and put us by getting a scale of coale there. And by their so doing, I and my vearnes are dampnified thirty pounds. All this I will prove myself and by evidence in the King’s mine.”