133 THE ANCIENT INDUSTRIES OF CANNOCK CHASE. 
‘‘ In the meantime, they also heat their furnace for a week’s time with 
‘‘ egharcoal without blowing it, which they call seasoning it ; and they 
‘‘ bring the ore to the furnace thus prepared and throw it in with the 
‘charcoal in baskets, where, by two vast pair of bellows placed behind 
‘‘the furnace and compressed alternately by a large wheel turned by 
‘t water, the fire is made so intense that after three days time, the metal 
‘will begin to run, still after increasing, till at length ina fortnight’s 
‘time they can run a sow and piggs once in i2 hours, which they do in 
‘-a bed of sand before ths mouth of the furnace, wherein they make one 
‘larger furrow than the rest which is for the sow, from whence they 
‘“‘ draw two or three and twenty others for the piggs.” 
A great advance in iron smelting was caused by the use of coal 
in place of charcoal, but, although previous to the date at which 
Dr. Plott wrote, this improvement had been tried and tried success- 
fully by Dud Dudley and others, such was the prejudice against the 
use of coal that the new method of smelting by means of coal and 
coke did not come into general use until 1747; this was followed by 
the invention of puddling, and the hot blast and the steam engine. 
In the South of England the same methods were in operation, 
Sir A. C. Ramsey says :— 
“* A considerable amount of iron ore used to be mined in the Weald 
‘of the South of England and smelted with wood or charcoal before 
‘‘the coal measures were worked extensively, and when the Weald was 
“ eovered to a great extent with Forest. Then the chief part of our iron 
‘“‘ manufactures was carried on in the South-east of England. Indeed, late 
‘in the last (18th) century there were still iron furnaces in the Weald 
‘of Kent and Sussex. The last furnace is said to have been at Ashburn- 
‘ham, and even hereand there we may now see heaps of slag overgrown 
‘‘with grass, and the old dams which supplied the water that drove the 
““waterwheels that worked the forges of Kent and Sussex. It is said 
‘‘that the cannon that were used in the fight with the Spanish Armada 
‘‘ came from this district, and the railings round St. Paul’s Cathedral 
‘“‘and other churches of the time of Sir Christopher Wren were also 
‘‘forged from the Wealden iron. 
There is no distinct reference to Coal Mining as an industry in 
England until after the granting of the Forest Charter by King 
Henry II]. in 1217. In the North of England in 1236 some land 
on the coast near Blyth was granted to the monks of Neominster 
Abbey for gathering seaweed and coal washed up on the shore, hence 
the term “‘sea-coal.” A few years Jater the monks of Tynemouth 
were not only digging coal from their estates but were shipping it 
