A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



shire, three in Herefordshire, and one at Tintern, 

 making their total number just equal to that of 

 the then iron-making district of Sussex. 1 In 

 Mr. Taylor's map of Gloucestershire, published 

 in 1777, iron furnaces, forges, or engines are in- 

 dicated at Bishopswood, Lydbrook, The New 

 Wear, Upper Redbrook, Parkend, Bradley, and 

 Flaxley. Yet only a small portion of the 

 mineral used at these works was obtained from 

 the Dean Forest mines, if we may judge from 

 the statement made in 1788 before the Parlia- 

 mentary Commissioners to the effect that 



there is no regular iron mine now carried on in the 

 said Forest, but there are about twenty-two poor men 

 who, at times when they have no other work to do, 

 employ themselves in searching for and getting iron 

 mine or ore in the old holes and pits in the said 

 Forest, which have been worked out many years.* 



From another source we learn that 



at Tintern the furnace charge for forge pig iron 

 was generally composed of a mixture of seven-eighths 

 of Lancashire iron ore, and one-eighth part of a lean 

 calcareous sparry iron ore from the Forest of Dean 

 called flux, the average yield of which mixture was 

 fifty per cent, of iron. When in full work Tintern 

 Abbey charcoal furnace made weekly from twenty- 

 eight to thirty tons of charcoal forge pig iron, and 

 consumed forty dozen sacks of charco.il ; so that 

 sixteen sacks of charcoal were consumed in making 

 one ton of pigs. This furnace was the first charcoal 

 furnace which, in this country, was blown with air 

 compressed in iron cylinders. * 



In the same year, 1788, we are informed by 

 the evidence of the gaveller that, according to 

 an account made out in the previous August, 

 there were then within the forest 121 coal-pits 

 (thirty-one of which were not actually in work), 

 which produced 1,816 tons of coal per week, 

 and employed 662 free miners. 4 



Mr. Nicholls tells us that 



The existing remains of the coal-works of this 

 period, combined with the traditions of the colliers, 

 enable us to form an accurate idea of the way in 

 which the workings were carried on. ' Levels,' or 

 slightly ascending passages, driven into the hillsides 

 till they struck the coal seam, appear to have been 

 general. This was no doubt owing to the facility 

 wi;h which they effected the getting of the coal 

 where it tended upwards into the higher lands form- 

 ing the edge of the Forest Coal Basin, since they re- 

 quired no winding apparatus, and afforded a discharge 

 for the water which drained from the coal beds. The 

 usages observed at the works entitled the proprietors 

 of their respective levels to so much of the corresponding 

 seams of coal as they could drain, extending right and 

 left to the limits awarded by the gaveller. So far this 

 mode of procedure was satisfactory enough, and 

 would no doubt have long continued to go on amic- 

 ably, had not the principle, highly judicious in itself, 

 that no workings were ever to intersect one another, 

 but always to stop when the mattocks met, been 



1 See Nicholls, Forest of Dean, 223. 



* Ibid. 223-4. * ^id. 224. 4 Ibid. 237. 



abused by driving ' narrow heading ' up into different 

 workings, whereby the rightful owner of the coal was 

 stopped, and the other party enabled to come in and 

 take it from him. Timber of considerable strength 

 was required throughout the underground excavations 

 to support the roof, hence proving a serious source of 

 spoliation to the woods. Large slabs of it were also 

 needed for the flooring, in order that the small coal- 

 trams might be the more readily pushed forward over 

 it, a space being left beneath for air to circulate, and 

 for the water to run out. 



If the vein of coal proposed to be worked did not 

 admit of being reached by a level, then a pit was 

 sunk to it, although rarely to a greater depth than 

 2 5 yards, the water being raised by buckets, or by a 

 water-wheel engine, or else by a drain having its out- 

 let in some distant but lower spot, such as is found to 

 have led from the Broad Moor Collieries to Cinder- 

 ford, a mile and upwards in length. The shaft of the 

 pit was made of a square form, in order that its other- 

 wise insecure sides might be the better supported by 

 suitable woodwork, which being constructed in succes- 

 sive stages was occasionally used as a ladder, the chief 

 difficulty being found in keeping the workings free 

 from water, which in wet seasons not infrequently 

 gained the mastery and drowned the men out. 5 



Reverting to the iron industry of Dean, we 

 find in 1795 the beginning of the resumption of 

 the manufacture of iron in the forest by means 

 of pit-coal cokes at Cinderford. ' The conductors 

 of the work succeeded,' according to Mr. Bishop, 



in making pig iron of good quality ; but from the 

 rude and insufficient character of their arrangements, 

 they failed commercially as a speculation, the quantity 

 produced not reaching twenty tons per week. The 

 cokes were brought from Broadmoor in boats, by a 

 small canal, the embankment of which may be seen 

 at the present day. The ore was carried down to 

 the furnaces on mules' backs from Edge Hill and other 

 mines. The rising tide of iron manufacture in Wales 

 and Staffordshire could not fail to swamp such 

 ineffectual arrangements, and as a natural consequence 

 Cinderford sank. 6 



At Flaxley, during the eighteenth century, 

 iron was still made in the old way with charcoal 

 chiefly from Lancashire ore, water-power being 

 used for the bellows and hammers. When the 

 furnace was at work about twenty tons a week 

 were reduced to pig iron ; in this state it was 

 carried to the forges where about eight tons a 

 week were hammered out into bars and plough- 

 shares ready for the smith. 7 



This practically ended the history of the Dean 

 miners until the opening years of the nineteenth 

 century. The social forces at work may be 

 briefly summarized. The Dean miners, alone of 

 all the mining population of England, had adopted 

 a constitution which, in its exclusiveness and 

 rigid protectionist features, can be compared only 

 with those of the craft gilds of the sixteenth 



4 Ibid. 239-40. 



6 Ibid. 224-5. 



7 From a description by the Rev. T. Rudge in 



1802. 



230 



