31 



which my subject does not touch upon. I am only anxious to 

 state, that under whatever conditions Iron ore was mined for, 

 (or won,) and smelted or reduced to the metallic state, it is 

 evident that in this part of Gloucestershire, as well as in the 

 Forest of Dean, it was carried on successfully.* In the year 

 1720, a date prior to the manufacture of pig-iron with pit 

 coal, it is stated that ia Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, and 

 on the borders of the Dean Forest, there were ten furnaces, 

 being then the only iron-making locality that (at that time) 

 could vie with the famous manufactories and the charcoal-made 

 Iron of Sussex and Kent,t where fourteen furnaces were in 

 blast ; but they, with the Wolds, " wooded fields of Kent and 

 Sussex," have long since passed away, and the hidden fields of 

 carbon that so long lay unknown to the eye of science and the 

 demands of industry and commerce, have succeeded in their 

 turn to be again perhaps at some future day, through research, 

 and the application of Chemistry, stUl further superseded. 



General Physical Features of the District. — The area, though 

 limited in extent, nevertheless contains a finely-developed series 

 of the Upper Paloeozoic rocks, especially the upper members of 

 the Old Red Sandstone, the Carboniferous Limestones, Millstone 

 Grit, Lower Coal Measures, Pennant Sandstone, and Upper Coal 

 Measures. The whole of these, with their chief physical featiires, 

 may be studied and examined in the Tortworth area, or at the 

 apex of the Bristol Coal Basin. A section constructed from 

 Tortworth to Coalpit Heath will give the following, viz. : — ^From 

 the Rectory through Tortworth Green (which is situated on 

 the Old Red Sandstone,) the Court and Park (on the Lower 

 Limestone shales,) on to Ley Hill and CromhaU (on the 

 Carboniferous Limestone,) Cromhall to the edge of CromhaU 

 Heath (on Millstone Grit,) thence to Sweethouse (on the Lower 

 Coal shales,) where the Pennant and its stores of Iron first come 

 into position, and which occupies a surface area of considerable 



* 63,830 tons are now annually raised in Gloucestershire. 



+ In Evelyn's time, 1620-1680, in Sussex alone, owing to the devastation caused 

 by the manufacture of iron and glass alone, little or no sign remains of the famous 

 Andradawald, originally one entire wood 120 miles long by 30 broad. 



