A HISTORY OF SURREY 



marketable, sufficient documentary evidence 

 remains to enable us to reconstruct the whole. 

 The fuel was invariably charcoal, and the 

 blast to the furnace was supplied by water- 

 power, the pond being dammed to work a 

 wheel which alternately opened and compres- 

 sed two pairs of bellows. Another pond 

 worked the wheel which raised and let fall 

 the hammer in the forge. Perhaps the earliest 

 document which gives us an insight into the 

 manner of reducing the iron to ' blooms ' in 

 the Weald is the account of the keeper of the 

 works at Tudeley in Kent between the years 

 1350 and 1354.' It then appears that at 

 these works four workmen, or blowers as they 

 were called, were employed, and that the 

 price of the bloom varied between 3^. id. and 

 31. ()d. The items of expenditure do not 

 lead to the supposition that water-power was 

 used at this time, at least in these particular 

 works. Accounts which more nearly belong 

 to the period at which we have ventured to 

 believe that the industry had its beginning in 

 Surrey, are those of the works of the attainted 

 Lord Seymour of Sudeley at Sheffield and 

 Worth in Sussex between the years 1 546 and 

 1 549.' From these accounts we learn that 

 these works were then casting guns and shot 

 for the Tower and in a small way firebacks, 

 which sold at 3;. \d. the piece. The ord- 

 nance when cast was first taken to Southwark, 

 where a room was hired for its storage. From 

 Southwark it was apparently conveyed across 

 the river to the Tower at intervals as it was 

 required. As much as ioj. a ton was 

 charged for the carriage from Worth to 

 Southwark. 



A very circumstantial account of the 

 processes of manufacture employed in the 

 Wealden ironworks is given by John Ray, the 

 naturalist, in an appendix to his Collection of 

 English IVordi not generally used, first published 

 in 1672.' He was indebted for his informa- 

 tion to one of the chief ironmasters of Sussex, 

 but in view of what has been said, we may 

 assume that his account is generally applicable 

 to the industry of the Weald and may not 

 unfitly be summed up here. He explains the 

 several processes used at the furnace and at 

 the forge or hammer. At the furnace the 



I Exch. K. R. Accts. bdle. 485, No. 11. 

 ' Ibid. bdle. 483, No. 19, and bdle. 501, 

 No. 3. 



' See Lower, Suss. Arch. Coll. ii. 200-300. 



metal was reduced from the ore and cast into 

 sows or pigs. The mine, as the ore is called, 

 was dug for at a depth of from 4 to 40 feet 

 or more. Before it could be put into the 

 furnace the several sorts of it had to be 

 mixed together to enable it to melt to better 

 advantage, and then alternate layers of this 

 and charcoal were piled together and the 

 whole burnt. The effect of this was to 

 ' mollify ' the ore and so to allow of its being 

 broken into small pieces. These pieces were 

 then put into the furnace, which had been 

 previously charged with charcoal, and after 

 about twelve hours' melting were drawn off 

 in the form of sows or pigs. The bottom and 

 sides of the hearth were made of sandstone, 

 the rest of the furnace being lined to the top 

 with brick. The average amount of iron 

 made in a ' founday,' or period of six days, 

 was eight tons, the amount increasing as the 

 hearth grew wider with the continual blow- 

 ing. If the hearth was made of good stone 

 it would last forty foundays or weeks, and 

 during this whole time the fire was never suf- 

 fered to go out. The forge or hammer had 

 at least two fires, one called the finery and the 

 second the chafery. That this was the case 

 in a Surrey forge we find in a very interesting 

 inventory of tools annexed to the 1666 lease 

 of the Witley mill to Yalden, where the 

 several contents of the finery and chafery are 

 detailed.* At the finery the sows, as they 

 were sent out from the furnace, were con- 

 verted into blooms or four square masses of 

 about 2 feet in length and next into 'anconies,' 

 which were bars of about 3 feet in length 

 with the ends left square and rough. This 

 was done by continual beats of the hammer 

 gradually increasing in force. At the chafery 

 the rough ends of the ancony were drawn 

 out and rounded off and the bar thus brought 

 to its perfected state. One man and a boy 

 at the finery were expected to turn out two 

 tons of iron in a week, whilst in the chafery 

 two men should in the same time make five 

 or six tons. As to the amount of fuel that 

 was consumed in these ironworks, we are told 

 that twenty-four loads of charcoal were neces- 

 sary to make eight tons of sows at the fur- 

 nace; three loads of the biggest ' coals' went 

 to one ton of iron at the finery, and one load 

 of smaller ' coals ' would draw out a ton at 

 the chafery. 



* See Sa;r. Arch. Coll. xviii. 50-52. 



276 



