A strong local tradition places the Talladale furnace on the bank of a small burn about one hundred and fifty yards south-east of the Talladale river; it stood in the corner of the field nearest to, and to the west of, the road. They say that when this field was reclaimed and trenched, large quantities of slag were turned up, and were buried in the land and in drains. The few specimens of slag found on the surface in 1883 are of both kinds. Some small fragments of ore discovered are No. 3. It seems pretty certain, therefore, that the Talladale furnace was carried on by Sir George Hay, and that it belongs to the historic class of ironworks.
5. Garavaig, on Slatadale Farm.
The Garavaig furnace stood in a slight hollow in the east corner of what is now the easternmost field of the Slatadale farm, close to where the Garavaig burn (on which are the Victoria Falls) runs into Loch Maree. They say the water-power of the burn was anciently increased by artificial means. When I first examined the field where the furnace stood it was newly ploughed, and part of it was stained black with fragments of charcoal, indicating extensive burnings. The farmer stated that he had buried immense quantities of slag in the drains and soil of this recently reclaimed field. There are still numerous fragments of No. 1 slag on the surface, so that the furnace belonged to the ancient class. The farmer said that he had noticed indications of there having been a furnace in the slight hollow already mentioned, and the fragments of slag are thickest there. The agricultural operations have reduced the place almost to a dead level. No kind of iron ore is found, but the locality is just the place where one would have expected "pans" of bog iron might have occurred.
6. Red Smiddy, Near Poolewe.
The remains of the iron furnace on the river Ewe are still called A Cheardach Ruadh, or "the Red Smiddy." They are more perfect, and therefore to some extent more attractive to one studying the subject, than any of the others. Unquestionably they are also more recent. That the Red Smiddy was part of Sir George Hay's undertaking appears certain; but it was very likely under his manager or factor that it was established, and probably a number of years later than the Letterewe furnace. The slags are exclusively of class No. 2, and closely resemble those formed in blast-furnaces at the present day, thus demonstrating the progress Sir George made in the art of the manufacture of iron after his commencement at Letterewe. Mr Macadam finds that this light slag is completely soluble in acids, and that it contains 16 per cent. of oxide of calcium, and only 23 per cent. of metallic iron. The ore found on the bank above the Red Smiddy and elsewhere near its remains are of the No. 3 class. Many of the fragments of ore have been roasted. This process does not seem to have been adopted at any of the other furnaces. It is another indication of the more recent date of the Red Smiddy, and of the improvements in the methods pursued there. The Letterewe and Talladale furnaces appear to have been originally established solely for the smelting of bog iron (No. 1). Gradually the paucity of that ore, the advantage of mixing imported ores with it, and their superior quality, led to the introduction of the latter; and then the convenience of having a furnace near the place where these imported ores were landed, led to the establishment of the Red Smiddy. No doubt timber for charcoal burning was at first obtainable in every direction, and afterwards, if there were not a sufficient quantity standing near the Red Smiddy, it could easily be floated down to it from Letterewe or other places on Loch Maree.
The Red Smiddy is on the north-east bank of the river Ewe, immediately below the termination of its navigable part, which also bears the name of the "Narrows of Loch Maree," so that this furnace may properly be said to stand at the foot, as the Fasagh works stand at the head, of the loch. The furnace is about half a mile from Poolewe, and is said to have been approached from the other side of the river by means of a weir or dam, which was long afterwards converted into a cruive dyke. This weir served also to maintain the water-power used for working the hammers. It spanned the river in a transverse direction from east to west, and the line of the old road is still visible leading down to its west end. Leaving the navigable part of the Ewe at the east end of the weir was a race or cut, more or less artificial, the channel of which still runs past the furnace which it formerly insulated. It was not till some time prior to 1830 that the old weir was restored, and used for salmon cruives. They were removed about 1852 in order to lower the level of the water above, and so drain land at the head of Loch Maree.
The furnace is still tolerably complete. It is about six feet square, and stands on a mound red with its remains. It is built of sandstone. The chimney stalk was standing to the height of eight or ten feet at the time the cruives were removed. Several men in the neighbourhood speak to this fact, and identify numerous pieces of sandstone lying about as having formed portions of it. They are all vitrified along the cracks. Some bricks or pieces of brick are also found; they are formed of rough clay. Mr Marr thought they contained rushes, that had been mixed with the clay to bind it. There is a large heap of the slag No. 2 near the furnace. A flat space to the north of the furnace appears to have been artificially formed for the purpose of moulding the iron; here I have found two small masses or pigs of cast iron. Mr Macadam has found that one of these masses contains 98‧8 per cent. of metallic iron, very little carbon, and only ‧8 per cent. of silicon. A pig of iron which Dr Arthur Mitchell found here in 1859, and deposited in the museum of Scottish Antiquities at Edinburgh, is of cast iron. Besides these pigs of iron several other iron articles have at different times been taken from the Red Smiddy. Pennant was told by the Rev. Mr Dounie in 1772, that he (Mr Dounie) had seen the back of a grate marked S. G. Hay. Mr Alexander Mackenzie of Lochend informed Mr Knox in 1786, that his grandfather had got from these works "an old grate and some hammers." Sir G. S. Mackenzie of Coul mentions in his "General Survey," in 1810, "the breech of a cannon he had found among the rubbish, which appeared to have been spoiled in casting." Old men state that they remember to have seen, about 1840, in front of the inn at Aultbea, a large iron hammer head which had been brought from the Red Smiddy; it required two men to lift it, and to raise it from the ground was a common test of strength; it was removed from Aultbea by Donald Macdonald, fishcurer at Lochinver. It may have been one of the hammers mentioned by Mackenzie of Lochend.
There are evidences of extensive charcoal burnings on several flat places along the east bank of the Narrows of Loch Maree for a space of nearly half a mile above the Red Smiddy, and much of the bank immediately above it is black with charcoal and the remains of fires where ore was roasted.
There is a tradition that Sir George Hay or his manager projected a canal, to connect the navigable part of the Ewe with the sea at a place called Cuil an Scardain, at the south-west corner of Loch Ewe. Two large circular holes at this place, now nearly filled up with stones cleared from the adjoining arable land, are said to have been borings made to test the feasibility of the project. They give some probability to the tradition.