IRONSTONE FORMATION OF THE FOREST OF DEAN. 219 



regard of their antiquity; but, in all likelihood, by far the larger 

 quantity of them were produced during the occupation of the Danes — 

 hence the common local name ''Dane's cinders."-^ 



With the invention and introduction of the bellows, the air-bloomeries 

 gave place to small furnaces called " blast-bloomeries," into which the 

 air was artificially introduced ; at first by human and cattle labour, but 

 afterwards by machinery, the furnaces being removed from the elevated 

 situations before spoken of to the lowest levels, or where the confluence 

 of several streams gave a lasting supply of water to move the water- 

 wheels by which the bellows were worked. 



These blast-bloomeries, it may be said, formed the first real attempt 

 towards the art of smelting, notwithstanding that not more than one- 

 half the iron was obtained from the ores, thus adding further to the 

 large quantity of metallic cinders accumulated under the old process. 

 'With, these furnaces, however, a considerable enlargement of the 

 manufacture rapidly followed ; but the difficulty experienced in 

 treating the ores, from their calcareous character, retarded the intro- 

 duction of the blast-furnace proper for some time after its adoption in 

 other districts. The earliest casting made in the Forest, according to 

 !Mr. Mushet, bears date 1620. 



In an account professing to enumerate all the blast-furnaces in 

 England, published about the year 1720, a date prior to the manufac- 

 ture of pig-iron with pit-coal, it is stated that in Gloucestershire and 

 Herefordshire, in and on the borders of Dean Porest, there were 10 

 furnaces, thus showing this to be the only iron-making locality that, 

 at that time, could bear comparison in importance with Sussex and 

 Kent, then the largest district, and where there were 14 furnaces in 

 blast, but which, together with the iron trade of those counties, have 

 long since disappeared amid those strange industrial revolutions which 

 the development of our coal-fields, the increasing scarcity of Vv^ood fuel, 

 and the progress made in the invention and application of machinery, 

 have produced in these and other localities of former manufacturing 

 celebrity. 



Towards the middle of the 17th century, James I. was possessed of 

 three blast-furnaces and two forges in the Forest of Dean ; and the 



The slag, from tiie ancient bloomeries in Dean Forest, was formerly carried 

 in large quantities to Bristol for the manufacture of black bottles, the superior 

 quality of which has been ascribed immemorially to the use of this material. 



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