INDUSTRIES 



of Surrey, speaks of it as extinct. Manning 

 and Bray some time before 1814, when their 

 work was published, mention the iron hammer 

 mill at Abinger as having been there till of 

 late years. But they do not say whether iron 

 was actually worked there within their recol- 

 lection. 



The gradual decay of the Wealden iron 

 industry was the consequence not of the 

 exhaustion of the supply of the ore, but of the 

 increasing cost of charcoal fuel and the substi- 

 tution of the cheaper modes of production 

 which resulted from the finally successful use 

 of pit-coal in smelting. What the consump- 

 tion of charcoal was about the year 1607 we 

 know from Norden, who tells us that each 

 furnace spent in every four and twenty hours 

 two, three or four loads of charcoal, ' which in 

 a year amounteth to an infinite quantity.' A 

 little more than a century later the furnaces 

 in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, together with 

 those in the Forest of Dean, were consuming 

 annually 17,350 tons of timber, or at the rate 

 of over 5 tons a week for each furnace.* We 

 need not wonder at the alarm that this state 

 of affairs gave rise to, nor that, as early as the 

 reign of James I., men were setting their wits 

 to work to devise less expensive methods of 

 producing the metal. The number of patents 

 which were granted in this reign and the 

 following to inventors who had persuaded 

 themselves that they had successfully solved 

 the problem of smelting with pit-coal or fuel 

 other than charcoal is considerable. It is not 

 to our present purpose to enumerate them 

 here ; suffice it to say that with the single and 

 notable exception of Dud Dudley, none of the 

 inventors appears to have been rewarded with 

 the smallest modicum of success. Dudley 

 alone amongst them seems to have been able 

 to produce good 'merchantable' iron from 

 pit-coal at a profit. We know however from 

 his own pathetic account how serious were 

 the many troubles in which he became in- 

 volved through the fierce and unscrupulous 

 opposition of the powerful charcoal ironmasters. 

 Whatever his secret may have been he does not 

 divulge it in his work, and it is believed to 

 have died with him. After his death no 

 serious attempts to revive his art were proba- 

 bly made until, somewhere about the year 

 1738, the process of smelting iron ore in the 

 blast furnace with coke was perfected by the 

 second Abraham Darby and finally obtained. 

 The re-invigoration of the iron industry of 

 the country was the immediate result, but the 

 process meant the end of the share taken by 

 the Weald in the trade, when its successful 



1 Diet. Nat. Biog. art. 'Dudley (Dud).' 



adoption was followed by the discovery of coal 

 in the neighbourhood of the iron-bearing dis- 

 tricts to the north and cast of the Trent and 

 Severn.* 



The general account of the iron industry 

 of the Weald which we have now given is 

 necessary towards a complete understanding 

 of the conditions under which the works in 

 Surrey maintained their existence for a period 

 of over 200 years. We may now attempt a 

 more particular account of the several works 

 in the county so far as they are known to us. 

 It is probable that at one time or another there 

 existed other furnaces and forges in Surrey 

 than those that now follow, but it is hardly 

 probable if there were any such that they 

 were of more than secondary importance. 

 We shall find that the list of 1574 affords a 

 convenient basis for our inquiry. 



EwooD IN Newdigate. — The list has ' Mr. 

 Ch"^ Dorrell one forge and one furnace in 

 Euwood also a forge in Fraunt.' The latter 

 is in Sussex. The Ewood works are the 

 earliest in Surrey of which any mention can 

 be found. They appear in the deed of 24 

 March 1553, to which we have already re- 

 ferred, when they were granted by Henry, 

 Lord Abergavenny, to George and Christopher 

 Darrell. In the inquisition taken in 1476 on 

 the death of Edward, Lord Abergavenny, 

 Ewood Park is named amongst his possessions, 

 but no mention is then made of any ironworks 

 there,^ nor is any subsequent notice of them 

 known to exist until this deed of 1553. This 

 fact we mention in support of our former con- 

 tention, that it was not until about this time 

 that attention was first directed to the produc- 

 tion of iron in Surrey. Under Christopher 

 Darrell's management these works appear to 

 have attained great importance. So much so, 

 that the district in which they were situated, 

 namely, the parishes of Charlwood, Newdigate 

 and Leigh, was, as we have seen, exempted 

 from the purview of the Act of i Elizabeth. 

 In the succeeding Act of 1581 more specific 

 mention is made of the woods growing on the 

 lands of Christopher Darrell, gentleman, in 

 the parish of Newdigate, which woods were 

 not to come under the operation of the Act, 

 because they had been preserved and coppiced 

 by their owner for the use of his ironworks in 

 those parts. 



This is an important point, and one which 

 if it had been properly understood by the 

 framers of the Act should have given an en- 

 tirely new direction to their legislative efforts 

 to provide for the due preservation of timber. 



2 Payne, Arch. Cantiana, xxi. 308 seq. 

 ' Chan. Inq. p.m. 16 Edw. IV. No. 66. 



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