A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



1572 Bristol stands ninth with fifty-three vessels 

 in a list of the merchant ships of sixteen principal 

 ports of England, 1 and in 1594 Bristol had built 

 seven ships in the previous thirteen or fourteen 

 years, 2 while in 1653, when there was a great 

 want of shipwrights at Woolwich, it was pro- 

 posed to impress 100 from Bristol and the west 

 country. 3 The profits of privateering gave an 

 incentive to Bristol shipping during the iyth 

 and 1 8th centuries. Sixty letters of marque 

 were granted to local ships between 1626 

 and 1628,* and there were fifty-one Bristol 



ships engaged in attacking the French during the 

 Seven Years' War, while in 1779 a ship ' pierced 

 for sixteen six-pounders,' and chiefly manned by 

 the Dean Foresters, was launched at Newquay, 

 and letters of marque were requested from the 

 government. 13 In 1781 the famous frigate 

 Arethusa was built by the Royal Navy in the 

 dockyards of Charles Hill & Sons, a firm of 

 shipbuilders that still exists in Bristol. 



From the end of the i8th century, however, 

 shipbuilding at Bristol declined, until the inven- 

 tion of steamships revived it in another form. 



ENGINEERING AND METAL INDUSTRIES 6 



If the local abundance of timber originated the 

 shipbuilding of Bristol, it has been carried on 

 by the industries that sprang from the mineral 

 resources of the county. These were found 

 mainly in the Forest of Dean, which had been 

 already to some extent exploited by the Romans ;' 

 but mines were evidently worked as well in the 

 Kingswood region, for Domesday mentions a 

 rent of ninety pigs of iron, paid annually by six 

 tenants at Pucklechurch. The Dean iron was 

 exported down the Severn, and thus Glouces- 

 ter naturally became a city of smiths. Giraldus 

 Cambrensis, writing in the I2th century, de- 

 scribes it as famous for its ' ironworks, and 

 smithery.' 7 In 1 390 the city seal bore four horse- 

 shoes and horsenails, which suggests that the nail 

 manufacture for the Royal Navy had not died 

 out since the Domesday record. 8 Bolt Lane and 

 Longsmith Street in Gloucester are names sug- 

 gestive of the same industry, and large numbers 

 of smiths' cinders are said to have been dug up 

 in these streets. It is thought that Colstal, the 

 old name of the Bareland, may indicate that coal 

 and timber were supplied thence for the forges. 9 

 In 1240, at any rate, the Gloucester records 

 mention a ' Jordan the nailer,' besides a needle- 

 maker and innumerable smiths in both the I3th 

 and 1 4th centuries. 10 



In the 1 7th century cutlery and wire-drawing 

 were being carried on in Gloucester. 11 By the 

 beginning of the 1 8th century an iron-rolling mill 

 had been set up at Willsbridge, in the Bristol dis- 

 trict, 12 and when Rudder wrote in 1779, iron and 



'S.P. Dom. Add. Eliz. xxii, No. I. 



' S.P. Dom. Eliz. ccl, No. 33. 



s Cat. S.P. Dom. (1653-4), P- 55- 



4 Arrowsmith, op. cit. 364. 



5 Number of persons employed, 1904 : 

 Engineering, machinery and ship-building . 10,470 



Brass and copper 461 



Miscellaneous iron and steel 2,832 



6 See infra, ' Mining,' 216. 



7 ' Gloverniam ferream atque fabrilem,' Gir. Camb. 

 (Rolls Ser.), vi, 171. 8 See infra, p. 2 1 63. 



9 J. J. Powell, Gloucestriana. 10 Glouc. Cal. 

 11 Fosbrooke, Hist, of Glouc. 424. 

 11 H. T. Ellacombe, Hist. ofBitton, 231. 



steel wire mills had been recently erected at 

 Fromebridge, near Frampton on Severn. He also 

 mentions brass-works at Warmley, in the parish 

 of Bitton, and at Baptist Mills, on the Frome, 

 near Bristol. 14 The former works, where wire and 

 battery were made, were famous as the first place 

 in England where brass and zinc were manufac- 

 tured. The zinc industry was started about 1 740 

 by William Champion, who employed Black 

 Jack, or calamine from the Mendips, for his manu- 

 facture. The process is thus described : 



In a circular kind of oven are placed pots of about 

 four feet in height, into the bottom of which is 

 inserted an iron tube, which passes through the floor 

 of the furnace into a vessel of water ; the pots are 

 filled with a mixture of calamine and charcoal, and 

 the mouths of each are then stopped with clay. The 

 fire being properly applied, the metallic vapour of the 

 calamine issues through the iron tube, and is con- 

 densed in small particles in the water, and being 

 remelted is formed into ingots, and is sent out under 

 the name of zinc or spelter. 14 



About 1758 the manufacture of brass was 

 begun by William's brother, John Champion, who 

 learnt the secret by going as a supposed beggar 

 to Holland, and working in a brass factory. On 

 his return he brought with him to Bitton five 

 Dutch workmen, whose descendants still live in 

 that parish. The Warmley works failed in 1 7 70, 

 and were sold to the Bristol Brass and Copper 

 Co., founded in 1704 ; but an even higher fame 

 was won by the brass-works at Hanham, two 

 miles from Bristol, where a Mr. Emerson, for- 

 merly Champion's manager, made some of the 

 purest brass in the world, ' free from knots,' 

 and ' resembling gold.' 16 There were at the 

 same date three large iron foundries in St. 

 Philip's, Bristol, one of which had a steam- 

 engine for boring cannon. Lead-works also 

 existed, where melted lead, red and white lead, 

 and small shot were manufactured. Bristol small 

 shot, indeed, was at that date considered superior 



" Rudder, op. cit. 63. " Ibid. 



15 H. T. Ellacombe, Hist, of Bitton, 229. 



16 New Hist, of Bristol, pub. by W. Matthews, 1794, 

 pp. 39-40. 



2O2 



