256 



Bolston ; Strangwoith Forge, Pembiidge ; Llangua Forge, kc. , but many of the 

 localities are now known only by some local name, as the "Forge barn," at 

 the junction of the rivers Monnow and Dore, near Pontrilas ; the " Forge farm" 

 at Peterchurch, near the rectory ; the "Furnace farm," Treagc, St. Weonarils, 

 and in a field at Llandinabo is a place called "the Furnaces." Doubtless there 

 are many others known only by near i-esidents, but about them all there is 

 evident proof of theii- having existed, in the abundance of slag and scoria; left 

 from the furnaces. The refuse heaps from the furuaces at Llaugua— which were 

 probably kept up to a late period— were so enormous, that they supplied 

 suflBcient ballast for nearly three miles of the Newport and Abergavenny 

 Railway. Tliese furnaces must have consumed great quantities of wood from 

 the adjoining districts of the country. (See Appendix I.) 



The iron manufacture in England received a great impulse from the dis- 

 coveries made in the course of the 17th century, and began to be much more 

 extensively carried on. 



In 1640 the King, Charles I., sold the Forest of Dean to Sir- John AVinter 

 —the great ii-on-master of the time— for £10,000 down; £16,000 a year for six 

 years ; and £1,950 12s. 6d. a year for ever afterwards. Sir John, after he had 

 satisfied his own needs, attempted to preserve what was left of the Forest, but 

 the miners resisted, threw down his inclosures, and went on destroying th« 

 timber as usual, by using it in their trade. Sir John Winter states that above 

 40,000 trees in the Forest were cut down during the Commonwealth by order of 

 the House of Commons. 



In 1656 a Bill was passed suppressing iron works in order to preserve 

 the timber. In the same year, muck more happily. Sir John Winter invented 

 a plan of " charring" coal by burning it in earthen pots, and thus converting it 

 into coke.* This discovei-y led the way to the use of coal instead of wood in 

 the manufacture of iron, and thus eventually saved the trees. The Act itself 

 could have had but little effect, nor did the coke come rapidly into favour, 

 for Andrew Yarrington, writing 10 years later (1077) speaks of the sale of 

 timber for the iron works by the country gentlemen, as an established practice. 

 "At the iron works," he says, "the gentlemen and others have money for 

 their wood at all times when they want it, whieh is to them a great benefit and 

 advantage." 



There was yet another and, for a time, a still more powerful cause for 

 the general destruction of timber, and this was the great civil war wliich began 

 in 1642. Throughout England trees were felled extensively during its course, 



* Evelyn says in his Diary : — 



"July 11th, 1056. Came home by Greenwich Ferry, whete I saw Sir John 

 Winter's new project of charring sea-coalo, to burne out the siilphure and render it 

 sweete. He did it by burning the coals in such earthen iiots as the glasse-men mealt 

 their luettal, so tiring tlieni without consuminij them, using a barr of yrou in each 

 crucible or pot, wliich barr has a hook at one end, that so the coales being mealted in a 

 furnace with other crude sea-coals under them, may be di-awn out of the potts sticking 

 to the yron, whence they are beaten off in greate halfe-exhausteJ cinders, which being 

 rekindled make a cleare pleasant chamber fire, deprived of their sulphm-e and arsenic 

 malignity. What successe it may have, time will discover." 



