240 CHARCOAL-BURNING IN ESSEX. 



that county, many having been dug up here and there at various 

 times. 



And, as regards London, I am obliged to Mr. H. L. Kerdel, of 

 the C.O.S. Office, Greenwich, who tells me that many tree- 

 trunk pipes were unearthed in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, 

 during the first week in November, 1903. Lastly, Mr. Whitaker 

 informs me that, according to Dr. Mill, some wooden water- 

 pipes were exposed in digging a trench along Dorset Street 

 between Baker Street and Gloucester Place in 1903. 



CHARCOAL-BURNING IN ESSEX. 



By T, S. DYMOND, F.I.C., County Technical Laboratories, Chelmsford. 



\^Read March ig^/z, 1904.] 



" At Thundersley, where there is much wood, part of the copse is cut at 

 eleven or twelve years' growth into lengths of three feet for burning into charcoal. 

 The burner is paid 20s. per 100 sacks, each of eight pecks ; he does not cover the 

 heaps with turf or earth, but with rushes, fern, thistles, long grass, weeds, or 

 stubble which the master finds, but if the burner gets them he has 2s. per hundied 

 more. He burns two heaps a s^'eek the year round, live cords in a heap ; the 

 master buys the wood at 14s. to 17s. the cord of twelve feet long, three-and-a- 

 half high, and three broad. A team of five horses in a six-inch wheeled waggon 

 comes every week from London and takes 200 sacks." General Vieia of the 

 Agriculture of Essex, by Arthur Young (1807), II., 147. 



The details of the process of charcoal-burning in Essex as 

 described by Arthur Young nearly a century ago remain true 

 to-day, but the magnitude of the industry has gradually declined 

 until now, probably, not one-third of the charcoal is produced in 

 the whole county that was formerly produced at Thundersley 

 alone. The causes of this decline are various. The disappear- 

 ance of hop-growing and drying as an Essex industry and of 

 the cutlery manufacture at Thaxted, for both of which charcoal 

 was used, and the replacement of gunpowder by more powerful 

 explosives have greatly diminished the demand for charcoal 

 and, therefore, the price obtained for it, w^hile the stubbing of the 

 woodlands in the great wheat years, and the depression of 

 agriculture since, which has resulted in the cutting up of the 

 larger farms and estates, and the diversion of Epping Forest 

 (where charcoal was largely burnt) to the purpose of a pleasure 

 resort have all tended to reduce the output. 



Yet, still, in the course of a ramble through the woods about 



