ON THE MANUFACTURE OF IRON. 739 
Tronstone ...:......... mere hive 3°44 tons at 16s. 1d. £2 15 5 
IHEMAtite OF > sc .secessuneaperccaes STL hiss MES SOG. On gr s 
— £2 18 10 
W@hax (chalk)! / 20050 Seva. 146: ;; DANOD. cetera ts on alg 
GRO '=.32, 53 - ceca doe ssiettee sa eaat QAO iss) Sas Se scSivees I 9 9 
MeCN. 0, . "sacs capads Poet sven eaneeneckae ORT OLEe aes O14. 2 
Sal MG ware 
These details are of the year 1812, when cold blast alone was employed. 
The make from one furnace was 2547 tons; equal to 49 tons per week. 
The ironstone, with the exception of 806 tons of “ beach stone,” was all the 
produce of the thin bands of our coal-measures. 
In 1825 pig iron rose in value to the unprecedented price of £12; and as 
a considerable portion of the stone smelted by the Tyne Iron Company was 
the produce of pits at Urpeth and its neighbourhood, Messrs. Perkins, Hunt, 
and Thompson, who were extensively engaged in coal-mining in that locality, 
blew in two furnaces, in 1830, which they had built at Birtley. Their 
operations, like those of their predecessors at Lemington, exhibit, with equal 
force, the absence of the elements of success in our coal-field for the manu- 
facture of iron even when the fuel was supplied to the furnaces at the low 
rate of 2s, per ton or less. The following is copied from their cost-book, 
and represents the workings for two furnaces for 1835, when hot air was 
used—an improvement introduced at Birtley in 1831. The make was 4390 
tons, or only 42 tons for each furnace per week. The cost per ton of iron 
was, for 
HAMS O\ cg tiie! cow asses skereae cops ees eaten £1 18 i+ 
UIE COBUK) | coccttsessceccanesuecers cereccaen oO” Ze 
Coal (5 or 6 tons probably) ............... © 7 of 
MERON AGC igs Fkk a ri'cncvdd dene Wes teerateeen o 14 24 
BSBTIGIICN ts paca yvauss sidaeceea> coe aiceaeaeee o4 2 
Total. :: .scuseeores £316 1 
In 1836, the furnace at Wylam was put into blast by Messrs. Thompson 
Brothers to smelt ironstone expected to exist in great abundance there, as has 
been already explained, 
We have now arrived at that period in our history of the iron-trade which 
was followed by a gradual but, ultimately, an entire change in the sources 
from which the furnaces of this district derived their supplies of ironstone. 
So early as 1836 a cargo of that ore, which in time displaced all others at 
the then existing works on the Tyne, so far as local ironstone was concerned, 
was sent from Grosmont, near Whitby, to Birtley. In the year 1833, and 
up to 1839, pig iron had ranged from £4 10s. to as high as £9 per ton in 
Wales. The demand for iron in this neighbourhood was so vastly on the 
increase, that the ores of the coal strata could not meet the growing require- 
ments, and the Whitby stone had not inspired much confidence either for 
economy or quality of the iron it produced. In consequence, speculators 
began to pay attention to those deposits of ironstone spoken of as being 
connected with the mountain limestone. Ridsdale was the place selected by 
Mr, Stephen Reed, Mr. Thomas Hedley, and others, where the stone ex- 
isted, as has already been described, and where coal could be obtained from 
a seam from 2 to 23 feet thick, situated in the same geological formation. 
_ Although pig iron had fallen in 1840 to £3 12s. 6d. at Glasgow, and in 
1841 was selling at £3 5s. per ton, a second work, to smelt the same bed of 
ironstone with the coal 24 feet thick, lying 70 fathoms below the ironstone, 
Was put in blast at Hareshaw; a second furnace was subsequently built at 
3B2 
