SUSSEX IRON 181 



of one of the most important ironworks in Sussex, 

 when Sussex iron paid for the smelting. 



Ironstone had been known to exist here even in the 

 days of the Roman occupation, when Anderida, 

 extending from the sea to London, was all one vast 

 forest. Heaps of slag and cinders have been found, 

 containing Roman coins and implements of contem- 

 porary date, proving that iron was smelted here to 

 some extent even then. But it was not until the latter 

 part of the Tudor period that the industry attained 

 its greatest height. Then, according to Camden, 

 " the Weald of Sussex was full of iron-mines, and the 

 beating of hammers upon the iron filled the neighbour- 

 hood round about with continual noise." The iron- 

 stone was smelted with charcoal made from the forest 

 trees that then covered the land, and it was not until 

 the first year or two of the last century that the 

 industry finally died out. The last remaining iron- 

 works in Sussex were situated at Ashburnham, and 

 ceased working about 1820, owing to the inability 

 of iron-masters to compete with the coal-smelted ore 

 of South Wales. 



By that time the great forest of Anderida had 

 almost entirely disappeared, which is not at all a 

 wonderful thing to consider when we learn that one 

 ironworks alone consumed 200,000 cords of wood 

 annually. Even in Drayton's time the woods were 

 already very greatly despoiled. 



Relics of those days are plentiful, even now, in the 

 ancient farmhouses ; relics in the shape of cast-iron 

 chimney-backs and andirons, or " fire-dogs," many of 

 them verv effectively designed ; but, of course, in 

 these days of appreciation of the antique, numbers 

 of them have been sold and removed. 



The water-power required by the ironworks was 

 obtained by embanking small streams, to form ponds ; 

 as here at Ifield, where a fine head of water is still 

 existing. Very many of these " Hammer Ponds " 

 remain in Sussex and Surrey, and were long so called 

 by the rustics, whose unlettered and traditional 



