IRON SAND FORMATION. 29 



the total neglect of drainage had occasioned, being circumstances pecuUarly 

 favourable for the conversion of the iron ore into bars. For this purpose 

 the lords of the several manors which lie within the woodland district 

 collected the rivulets into large ponds, and erected mills and furnaces. 

 The iron, so procured, was at first principally used for agricultural imple- 

 ments ;" but Fuller also observes, in his Worthies, that " it is almost in- 

 credible how many great guns Avere made of the iron of this county. The 

 total decline of the manufacture in Sussex is to be attributed to the esta- 

 bhshments in Scotland and Wales, in which pit-coal is used, the superior 

 cheapness of fuel having enabled them to monopohze the trade." There 

 is now but a single foundery in the eastern division, and which belongs to 

 the Earl of Ashburnham. According to the present practice, it requires 

 fifty loads of charcoal, and fifty loads of ironstone (twelve bushels to each 

 load) to make thirteen tons of pig iron*. 



Mr. Young, in his " General View of the Agriculture of Sussex," gives 

 the following account of the strata of ironstone in the vicinity of Ash- 

 burnham. " At Penhurst, near Battel, the soil is gravelly to an indeter- 

 minate depth. At the bottom of the Earl of Ashburnham's park, sand- 

 stone is found soHd enough for building. Advancing up the hill, the 

 sand-rock is twenty-one feet in thickness, but so friable, as easily to be re- 

 duced to powder. On this immediately a marl sets on, in the different 

 depths of which the ironstone comes on regularly, in all the various kinds 

 as follows : 



" 1. Small balls f. Provincially twelve foots, because so many feet di- 

 stant from the first to the last bed. 



" 2. Grey hmestone, which is used as a flux. 



" 3. Foxes. 



" 4. Riggitt. 



" 5. Balls. 



« 6. Caballa balls. 



" 7. Whiteburn : what tripoh, properly calcined and treated, is made of 



* Ddllaways History of the Western Division of the County of Sussex, vol. i. page clxi. 

 folio, 1815. 



-|- The provincial terms employed by Mr. Young are now obsolete ; at least I was unable to 

 obtain any explanation of them from the workmen, on a recent visit to Ashburnham. 



