was, indeed, some centuries later than the Roman occupation, a period coming down to quite modern times, during which English iron-mines were left almost unworked. In Edward III.'s reign, the pots, spits, and frying-pans of the royal kitchen were classed among his majesty's jewels. For the planners of the Armada the greater abundance and excellence of Spanish iron compared with English was an important element in their calculations of success. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the home market looked to Spain and Germany for its supply both of iron and steel. After that, Sweden came prominently forward; and from her, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, no less than four-fifths of the iron used in this country was imported!The reason of this marvellous neglect of what has since proved one of our main sources of wealth lay in the enormous consumption of timber which the old smelting processes entailed. The charcoal used in producing a single ton of pig-iron represented four loads of wood, and that required for a ton of bar-iron represented seven loads. Of course, the neighbourhood of a forest was an essential condition to the establishment of ironworks; but wherever such an establishment was effected, the forest disappeared with portentous rapidity. At Lamberhurst, on the borders of Kent and Sussex, with so trifling a produce as five tons per week, the annual consumption of wood was two hundred thousand cords. The timber wealth of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex--which counties were then the centres of our iron industry--seemed menaced with speedy annihilation. In the destruction of these great forests, that of our maritime power was supposed to be intimately involved; so that it is easy to understand how, in those days, the development of the iron manufac[Pg 11]ture came to be regarded in the light of a national calamity, and a fitting subject for restrictive legislation! Various Acts were passed towards the end of the sixteenth century prohibiting smelting-furnaces within twenty-two miles of London, and many of the Sussex masters found themselves compelled, in consequence, to break up their works. During the civil wars of the seventeenth century, a severe blow was given to the trade by the destruction of all furnaces belonging to royalists; and after the Restoration we find the crown itself demolishing its own works in the Forest of Dean, on the old plea that the supply of shipbuilding timber was thereby imperilled. Between 1720 and 1730 the ironworks of Worcestershire and the Forest of Dean consumed 17,350 tons of timber annually, or five tons for each furnace.
'From this time' (the Restoration), says Mr Smiles, 'the iron manufacture of Sussex, as of England generally, rapidly declined. In
1740 there were only fifty-nine furnaces in all England, of which ten were in Sussex; and in 1788 there were only two. A few years later, and the Sussex iron-furnaces were blown out altogether. Farnhurst in Western, and Ashburnham in Eastern Sussex, witnessed the total extinction of the manufacture. The din of the iron hammer was hushed, the glare of the furnace faded, the last blast of the bellows was blown, and the district returned to its original rural solitude. Some of the furnace-ponds were drained and planted with hops or willows; others formed beautiful lakes in retired pleasure-grounds; while the remainder were used to drive flour-mills, as the streams in North Kent, instead of driving fulling-mills, were employed to work paper-mills.' The plentifulness of timber in the Scot-tish Highlands explains the establishment of smelting-furnaces, in 1753, by an English company at Bunawe in Argyllshire, whither the iron was brought from Furness in Lancashire.[Pg 12]
Few of our readers can be unacquainted with the fact that iron-smelting at the present day is performed not with wood but with coal. It will readily, then, be understood that the substitution of the one description of fuel for the other must have formed the turning-point in the history of the British iron manufacture. This substitution, however, was brought about very slowly. The prejudice against coal was for a long period extreme; its use for domestic purposes was pronounced detrimental to health; and, even for purposes of manufacture, it was generally condemned. Nevertheless, as wood became scarcer and dearer, a closer examination into the capabilities of coal came naturally to be made; and here, as in almost every other industrial path, we find a foreigner acting as our pioneer. The Germans had long been experienced in mining and metallurgy; and it was a German, Simon Sturtevant, who first took out a patent for smelting iron with coal. But his process proved a failure, and the patent was cancelled. Other Germans, naturalised here, followed in Sturtevant's footsteps, but with no better results; until at last an Englishman, Dud Dudley (1599-1684), took up
the idea, and gave it practical success. The town of Dudley was even then a centre of the iron manufacture, and Dud's noble father,
3
Lord Dudley, owned several furnaces. But here, also, the forest-wealth of the district was fast melting away, and the trade already languished under the dread of impending dissolution. In the immediate neighbourhood, meanwhile, coal was abundant, with iron-stone and limestone in close proximity to it. Dud, who, as a child, had haunted and scrutinised his father's ironworks with wondering delight, was placed just at this juncture in charge of a furnace and a couple of forges, and immediately turned his energetic mind to the question of smelting with coal. Some careful experiments succeeded so well that he wrote to his father,[Pg 13] requesting him
to take out a patent for the process; and this patent, registered in Lord Dudley's name, and dated the 22d February 1620, properly inaugurated the great metallurgic revolution which had made the English iron trade what it now is. Andrew Yarranton was another pioneer in the iron and tin-plate industry, and wrote a remarkable work on England's Improvement by Sea and Land (1677-81).
Nevertheless, even with this positive success on record, the inert insular mind long refused to follow the path cleared for it. Dud's discovery 'was neither appreciated by the iron-masters nor by the workmen;' and all schemes for smelting ore with any other fuel
than wood-charcoal were regarded with incredulity. His secret seems to have been bequeathed to no one, and for many years after his death the old, much-abused, forest-devouring system went tottering on. Stern necessity, however, taught its hard lesson at last, and a period insensibly arrived when the employment of coal in smelting processes became the rule rather than the exception, and might
be seen here and there on an unusually large scale--especially at the celebrated Coalbrookdale works, in the valley of the Severn, Shropshire.
The founder of the Coalbrookdale industries was a Quaker--Abraham Darby (1677-1717). A small furnace had existed on the spot ever since the days of the Tudors, and this small furnace formed the nucleus of that industrial activity which the visitor of Coalbrookdale surveys with such wonder at the present day.
In Darby's time, the principal cooking utensils of the poorer classes were pots and kettles made of cast-iron. But even this primitive ware was beyond native skill, and most of the utensils in question were imported from Holland. Exercising an effort of judgment, which, moderate as it was, seems to have been hitherto un[Pg 14]exampled, Darby resolved to pay that country a visit, and ascertain in person why it was that Dutch castings were so good and English so bad. The use of dry sand instead of clay for the moulds comprised, he found, the whole secret.
On returning to England, Darby took out a patent for the new process, and his castings soon acquired repute. The use of pit-coal in the Coalbrookdale furnaces is not supposed, however, to have become general until the worthy Abraham had been succeeded by his son; but when it once did become so, the impetus thereby given to the iron trade and to coal-mining was immense. It is the latter industry which may pre-eminently claim to have called the steam-engine into existence. The demand for pumping-power adequate
to the drainage of deep mines set Newcomen's brain to work; and the engine rough-sketched by his ingenuity, and perfected by the genius of Watt, soon increased enormously the production of iron by rendering coal more accessible and the blast-furnace more efficient.
A son-in-law of Abraham Darby's, Richard Reynolds by name, made a great stride towards the modern railway by substituting iron for wood on the tramways which connected the different works at Coalbrookdale; and it was a grandson of the same Abraham who designed and erected the first iron bridge.
England, we have seen, borrowed
