INDUSTRIES 



between 25 October, 1690, and the following 

 June, the cost being as follows : 80 



' d. 

 P d to Joseph Mittell for making y shott 



moldesfor 32 payer of 24 pounders 



at !' y* pair 1120 



P a to him for making of 42 payer of 



12 pounder at !' y" payer ... 220 

 P d to him for making 54 paire of 9 



pound' at !* y e paire .... 2140 

 P d to him for setting y Broad R upon 



y e 128 paire at 3* y e paire ... 1120 

 P d for making of one hundred tunn of 



Shott at seaven shill' y e Tunn ..3500 

 P d for carying of 90 Tunn and a halfe 



to Lewes of y* s d shott at 5'- 6* ye 



Tunn 24 17 9 



67 17 9 



For some years the Waldron accounts con- 

 tinue to contain entries relative to the making of 

 shot, and between October, 1694, and May, 

 1695, the furnace turned out over 150 tons of 

 'shelles and carracases,' and about 3 tons of 

 shell-moulds. 81 The discovery, however, of the 

 way to use mineral coal for iron-smelting brought 

 dangerous competitors into the field in the north 

 and west of England, so that during the eighteenth 

 century the number of Sussex ironworks rapidly 

 dwindled. By 1740 there were in the county 



only ten furnaces, with a total annual output of 

 only 1,400 tons. Cannon were still made in 

 considerable quantities at Heathfield 82 and other 

 places, especially at the Gravetye and Warren 

 furnaces on the borders of Sussex and Surrey, 

 from which place large numbers of guns ranging 

 from 3-pounders to 32-pounders were carried to 

 Woolwich about I762, 83 and at the Gloucester 

 furnace in Lamberhurst, whose owner, Mr. Legas, 

 made a large fortune before his death in 1752.** 

 From this last-named furnace also came a series 

 of iron castings representing scriptural subjects, 

 apparently taken from German originals by 

 Thomas Prickett, about I77o. 86 The greatest 

 production of the Lamberhurst ironworks in 

 some ways was the massive iron railing cast for 

 St. Paul's in the early part of the eighteenth 

 century, at a cost of over i i,ooo. 86 This fur- 

 nace, owing to mismanagement, came to an end 

 in 1765 ; 87 one in West Sussex, at Linchmere, 

 struggled on until ijj(>,* s but by 1788 there 

 were only two furnaces left in the county, 89 and 

 that of Farnhurst succumbed shortly after this 

 date, so that by 1796 there was but one solitary 

 survivor. 90 The last of the Sussex ironworks 

 was that at Ashburnham, of which the furnace 

 appears to have blown out about 1811," though 

 the forge was continued for some years longer, 

 and only abandoned about i822. 93 



BELL-FOUNDING 



The earliest reference to the casting of bells 

 in Sussex appears to be the entry, in the twelfth- 

 century list : of householders in the vill of Battle, 

 of the messuage of /Edric ' qui signa fundebat,' 

 which Mr. Lower translates, probably quite cor- 

 rectly, as ' who cast the bells.' From this time 

 down to the late sixteenth century we have no 

 definite proof of the existence of any bell-founder 

 in Sussex, but from the evidence so carefully col- 

 lected by Mr. Daniel-Tyssen,* it is clear that 

 many of the ancient bells still hanging in the 

 churches of Sussex were cast within the county, 

 though under the direction of founders ' from the 

 shires,' to use the local term for the inhabitants 

 of other counties. That this was the case at a 

 later date is sufficiently established by actual 

 records. Thus the four bells of All Saints', 

 Hastings, were cast in that town in 1614, by, or 

 under the direction of two founders whose works 

 were seated at Chichester and Tarring ; four at 

 Hailsham were cast in 1663 by William Hull, 

 foreman of John Hodson, a London founder, at 



80 Add. MS. 33156, fol. 5. 



81 Ibid. fol. 58. 



1 CAron. of Battle Abbey, trans, by M. A. Lower, 

 p. 17. 



1 Suss. Arch. Coll. xvi, 138-232. To this admir- 

 able article I am indebted for the materials for my 

 own article, except where other references are given. 



Bell Banks in that parish, which appears to have 

 been subsequently chosen, in 1676, as the place 

 for re-casting one of the Ninfield bells. In 1673 

 the earl of Dorset contributed towards the cost 

 of re-casting a peal of five for the church of 

 Withyham, which had been burnt down ten 

 years earlier, and further provided fuel for melt- 

 ing the metal ; three of these bells were re-cast 

 at Withyham in 1715 by John Waylett, an 

 itinerant founder, by whom some forty Sussex 

 bells were made, mostly in their own or adjacent 

 parishes, as, for instance, those of Ripe in 1717, 

 and one at St. Clement's, Hastings, in 1718. 

 Early in 1724 Waylett erected a temporary fur- 

 nace at Lewes, where he re-cast the bells of 

 St. John-sub-Castro, those of Laughton, and one 

 of the Mayfield peal, for which he further made 

 a new bell. Another itinerant founder was 

 John Wood of Bishopsgate, who in 1697 visited 

 Hastings, and cast three bells for All Saints' and 

 one for St. Clement's, the latter parish providing 

 ' four hundred and a quarter and twenty-four 



81 Suss. Arch. Coll. n, 211. 



* Ibid, xlvi, 64-8. "Ibid, ii, 213. 



85 Ibid, xxxix, 214 ; xlvi, 40-41. 



86 Ibid, ii, 203. w Ibid. 213. 



88 Ibid. 214. 



89 Ibid, iii, 247. *> Ibid. 



91 Ibid, xxxvi, 3. Ibid, xxxiii, 267. 



249 



