INDUSTRIES 



we have now attempted to sketch, there are 

 two others marked on the map which pre- 

 faces Aubrey's Surrey. These however are 

 outside the ferruginous district and conse- 

 quently do not exactly belong to the category 

 of those already enumerated. The iron must 

 have been carried to them to be worked, and 

 perhaps was not the native product of the 

 county. One of these was at Byfleet and is 

 presumably the mill which, in Manning and 

 Bray's time, had lately been converted from 

 an iron-mill into ' a considerable cornmill.' ^ 

 The other is on the Wandle a little to the 

 north of a copper-mill at Merton Abbey. 

 This may be the iron plate mill, which as 

 early as 1 649 is several times mentioned in 

 the Parliamentary Survey of the manor of 

 Wimbledon.' 



From the foregoing accoimt of the iron- 

 works of Surrey it will be seen that the in- 

 dustry must have been at one time of very 

 great importance, although probably always 

 subsidiary to that of Sussex. This latter fact 

 is to some extent borne out by the many in- 

 stances to which attention has been called of 

 the working of the mills by Sussex iron-mas- 

 ters. A study, moreover, of the districts in 

 which the industry was carried on in Surrey 

 leads to the conclusion that the ore was ob- 

 tained in them from seams which extended 

 from corresponding districts in Sussex, where 

 it had been worked at earlier periods. In the 

 east for instance the works about Lingfield 

 belonged to the Worth district, and the ore 

 was extracted from the ferruginous sandstone 

 of the Hastings beds. Following the southern 

 border of the county westwards we next 

 arrive at the Charlwood district, in which 

 were the works of Christopher Darrell at 

 Ewood. This district was a branch of one 

 which extended from Ifield in Sussex, where 

 the ore was the clay ironstone of the Wealden 

 clay. Further west were the works at Shere 

 and Thursley. The ore here must have been 

 obtained from the Lower Greensand, and may 

 have been, as Mr. Maiden suggests, the brown 

 siliceous ironstone or carstone of the Folke- 

 stone beds. In the extreme west we have 

 again the Wealden clay, and the works about 

 Haslemere and Dunsfold belonged to the 

 North Chapel district in Sussex.^ 



Of the articles manufactured by the iron- 

 masters of the Weald the most important and 

 that which, as we have seen, especially chal- 

 lenged the interference of the government 

 with the industry was ordnance, including 



' Manning and Bray, Hist. 0/ Surrey, iii. 181. 

 ' Aug. Off. Pari. Surveys, Surrey, 72. 

 ^ Maiden, Hist. 0/ Surrey, 277, 278. 



both guns and gunshot. Firebacks and and- 

 irons of local manufacture were until recently 

 to be frequently found in old houses and cot- 

 tages in the Weald. These were cast in 

 moulds of sand, on which the designs, which 

 are of great variety, had been previously im- 

 pressed by means of carved wooden boards or 

 movable stamps affixed to boards.* A fire- 

 back, which we need have no hesitation in 

 attributing to the Witley works, is preserved 

 at Rake House, Milford, once the residence 

 of the owners of these works. It consists of 

 a scroll-work pattern representing eagles' heads 

 and foliage, with the initials H.B. for Henry 

 Bell at the head. Below, evidently of a later 

 casting and reversed, are the initials A.S. (An- 

 thony Smith) and the date 1630. It was 

 apparently a stock pattern, as a broken example 

 of the same was found in a neighbouring 

 cottage.^ Date and initials could afterwards 

 be added to suit the purchaser's taste. In a 

 few well known instances cast iron is em- 

 ployed for grave slabs. In Surrey there is a 

 curious slab of this material to the memory of 

 Anne Forster, daughter and heir to Thomas 

 Gaynsford, within the altar rails of Crow- 

 hurst church. The lady died 18 January 

 1 591-2.* Such smaller articles as tobacco 

 tongs, the knockers and fittings of doors and 

 the like were probably only made in the 

 declining days of the industry. It must 

 be borne in mind that the chief end of 

 the Wealden ironmasters was to reduce the 

 metal from its ores and to put it on the mar- 

 ket in such forms as bar-iron and pig-iron, in 

 which it could be readily carried over the 

 country and sold to the smiths who would 

 convert it to the purposes required. In this 

 form, as we know, in the Middle Ages, the 

 manorial bailiffs, to whom it was the most 

 expensive item in their accounts, bought it, 

 usually at one of the great fairs, in bars of 

 about four pounds in weight, and served it out 

 to the local smiths to fashion into such articles 

 as the occasion demanded.^ 



Of the process by which the ironmasters 

 of the Weald reduced the metal from its first 

 state to the form in which it was readily 



* Gardner, y^?r/5. Ivi. 139 seq. 



5 Nevill, 0/(/ Cottage and Domestic Architecture 

 in South-West Surrey, ed. 2, 63. The fireback is 

 figured in Surr. Arch. Coll. xviii. 3 1 . 



The slab is figured in Surr. Arch. ColL iii. 45. 

 It is there stated that the inscription commencing 

 ' Her : lieth : ' appropriate enough over the last 

 resting-place of the deceased, has been actually 

 found with other examples of this slab in use as 

 firebacks. 



' Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and 

 Wages, 87, 88. 



275 



