A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



of the stone quarries more satisfactory, the com- 

 missioners could only advise the Crown to re-issue 

 gales on liberal leases to applicants born within 

 the hundred, a time-limit being assigned for 

 putting in claims. 



In 1838, the royal assent was given to 'an 

 Act for regulating the opening and working of 

 mines and quarries in the Forest of Dean and 

 hundred of St. Briavel's by the agency of a board 

 of commissioners.' Some idea may be formed 

 of the necessity for such a mining commission, 

 and of the difficulties which it had to overcome, 

 from the following particulars, as Mr. Sopwith 

 stated them in a paper read before the British 

 Association at Newcastle in 1838 : 



Great distrust of any interference existed, and 

 some of the mine-owners refused to allow of under- 

 ground surveys being made. Numerous and con- 

 flicting parties were then working mines under 

 customs which were totally inapplicable to the 

 present state of mining ; destructive at once to the 

 interests of the free miners of the forest, ruinous, as 

 sad experience had shown, to the enterprizing capi- 

 talist ; and subversive to the rights of the crown. 

 So great was the perplexity and so numerous and 

 conflicting were the claims of contending parties, 

 that the law advisers of the Board of Woods deemed 

 it almost impossible to arrive at any satisfactory ad- 

 justment of them within the period of three years 

 as named in the Dean Forest Mining Act. The 

 ruinous and unsatisfactory state of the mines must 

 appear obvious on a slight consideration. As no 

 plans existed, it was impossible to tell to what ex- 

 tent or in what direction the underground works 

 were being carried. The crossing of mattocks, that 

 is to say, the actual meeting of workmen under- 

 ground, was often the abrupt signal for contention ; 

 the driving of narrow headings was a means by 

 which one coal-owner might gain possession of coal 

 which of right belonged to another ; and a pit, 

 though sunk at a cost of several thousand pounds, 

 had no secured possession of coal beyond 1 2 yards 

 around it, that is, a tract of coal 24 yards in dia- 

 meter. At 40 or 50 yards from such a work another 

 adventurer might commence a pit, and have an equal 

 right, if right it could be called, to the coal. If a 

 long and expensive adit was driven, another one 

 might be commenced only a few yards deeper ; and 

 from such a state of things it is quite clear that great 

 uncertainty and frequent losses inevitably ensued. 1 



The important Act 8 of 1838 provides that all 

 male persons born and abiding within the hundred 

 of St. Briavel's, being up wards of twenty-one years 

 of age, and having worked a year and a day in 

 a coal or iron-mine or stone quarry within the 

 said hundred, should alone have the right to 

 hold or dispose of such works, a register of all 

 such persons being kept as ' free miners.' It 

 suppressed all claims to pit timber with all 

 ' customs,' and assigned to the commissioners 

 under the Act the duty of fixing rents and 

 royalties for twenty-one years, and to the 



1 Nicholls, Forest of Dean, 1 267. 

 1 Stat. i & 2 Viet. cap. 43. 



gaveller power to limit and regulate, as well as 

 to enter and survey all works which might be 

 re-awarded or galed. No engines were to be 

 erected nearer than sixty yards to any enclosure, 

 within which only air-shafts might be opened, 

 and all unnecessary buildings were to be 

 removed. 



The duties of the Mining Commissioners 

 were carried out with great ability and discretion, 

 and in 1841 no less than 104 collieries and 

 2O iron-mines were defined and awarded, while 

 certain regulations were drawn up for their 

 working. 



The later history of the iron-mines in the 

 forest cannot be dealt with in any detail here. 

 As has already been remarked, the greater pro- 

 portion of the ore smelted at Tintern, Flaxley, 

 and other places in the late eighteenth cen- 

 tury had been brought from outside the forest. 

 Much capital was lost in the first quarter of the 

 nineteenth century in efforts to establish a stable 

 iron-making trade in the forest, but after 

 Mr. Mushet had given up the attempt as hope- 

 less, Messrs. Teague, Montague, and James 

 were more successful between 1825 and 1827. 

 At Parkend especially a stable business was built 

 up, and the Forest of Dean Iron Company, 

 in the early ' sixties ' of the last century, were 

 producing upwards of 300 tons of pig iron per 

 week, consuming weekly 350 tons of coke as 

 well as 600 tons of iron ore obtained from the 

 mines at Oakwood and China Eugene close by, 

 and from the Perseverance and Findall Mine on 

 the east side of the forest. At the same time 

 there existed tin-plate works at Parkend, draw- 

 ing two-thirds of the iron required from the local 

 mines. They were carried on by Messrs. W. 

 Allaway and Sons, who had similar works on a 

 greater scale at Lydney. 3 Iron ore from Dean 

 was also used to some extent at Soudley and 

 Lydbrook, while the Vale Iron Works, near 

 Cinderford, were at the same time supplied 

 principally from the Shake-Mantle, Buckshraft, 

 and St. Annal's mines. Indeed, in 1865, the 

 yield of ore from the Buckshraft was no less 

 than 46,127 tons. 



The famous Westbury-Brook iron mine * on 

 the eastern side of the forest was opened about 

 1 837, immediately below the extensive ' old men's 

 workings,' where many ancient mining implements 

 were found. In 1864 and 1865 the average 

 yearly output of iron ore from this mine was 

 nearly 20,000 tons. The Old Sling Iron Mine 



* In comparison it may be noted that for the year 

 1 904 not a single blast-furnace for the making of pig- 

 iron was returned for Gloucestershire ; Coal and Iron 

 Diary (1906), 150. Even in 1878 there were 9 iron 

 furnaces in the Forest, of which 2 were in blast, pro- 

 ducing upwards of 40,000 tons of pig-iron. Hull, 

 Coalfields ofGt. Britain (5th ed. 1905), 82, 83. 



* A section of this mine, the deepest iron-mine in 

 the Forest, will be found illustrated in Kendall, Iron 

 Ores of Gt. Britain, 131. 



232 



