{THE ANCIENT INDUSTRIES OF CANNOCK CHASE, 132 
the smelting process effected by the “bloomeries,” that large 
quantities of half-smelted iron were thrown away among the 
slag. Some of this has been removed and been used again, and 
much has been used for road material and wall building ; but appli- 
cations are still occasionally received for permission to search for 
and take away ‘‘tap cinders.” The heavy blocks of half smelted 
ore called ‘“‘tap cinders” formed the hearths of the “ bloomeries,” 
and are round in shape and slightly concave. A good specimen 
may be seen in the road at Hazel Slade, opposite Mr. Couthwaite’s 
training stable where it now does duty as a kerbstone. It was 
the custom to bring the raw material to the water power necessary 
to drive the wheels of the mills and foundries. The stream 
called ‘* Rising Brook” supplied the power, and along its banks the 
names still linger to identify places with the works once carried on. 
Such names as Brindley Pool, Furnace Pool, Baland’s Pool, Furnace 
Coppice, Forge Farm, Rolling Mill, Slitting Mill, &c., indicate 
plainly the sites of busy scenes where generation after generation 
toiled. The numerous Mill Ponds, many of which still exist, shew 
that the industry was not a small one. The process of smelting in a 
*‘bloomerie” consisted in the ore, after having been calcined in 
heaps upon the ground, being placed upon the hearth mixed with 
charcoal and smelted by a blast of cold air produced by bellows. 
Dr, Plott, in his Natural History of Staffs., published in 1686, speaks 
of the great improvements which had then been effected in iron 
smelting :— 
‘““Our Ancestors,” he says, made iron by means of foot blasts or 
“‘bloomeries, by which way they could make but one little lump or 
“bloom of iron in a day—not a hundredweight—leaving as much iron in 
“the slag as they got out; whereas now they will make two or three 
**tons of cast iron in twenty-four hours, Jeaving the slag so poor that 
‘the founders cannot smelt them again to profit.” 
He describes the process of smelting in his time as follows .— 
‘*When they have gotten their ore, before ‘tis fit for the furnace,they 
‘“burn or calcine it upon the open ground with small charcoal, wood, or 
“‘sea coal to make it break into small pieces, which will be done in 
‘*three days and this they call annealing it or fitting it for the furnace. 
