852 
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF THE IRON-MINES OF THE WEALD. 
BY W. BOYD DAWKINS, M.A., F.R.S. 
Perhaps few, as they go by train from Tunbridge to Hastings, through the well- 
wooded, sparsely-populated country, now plunging into a tunnel, now looking down a 
valley from the top of an embankment, realize that they are in the midst of what was 
not very long ago the principal iron district in England. The large woods, the green 
fields, the quaint old houses, contrast so strongly with the dense population, the clang 
of forges, and the large barren cinder-heaps of the black country, that it is hard to 
believe that the weald of Kent and Sussex at one time stood at the head of our iron ex¬ 
port trade, or that the last furnace grew cold but some forty years ago; yet the facts 
are beyond doubt. Mr. Lower, the eminent Sussex antiquary, has traced the mediaeval 
history of the ironworks of Sussex, in a valuable series of papers, published by the 
Archaeological Society of that county, and the Rev. E. Turner has proved that they have 
probably been worked since the time of the Roman occupation of Britain. The evidence 
that came before my notice, while I was engaged in the geological survey of the district 
in 1862, seems to point towards their being of a far higher antiquity. The extent to 
which the ironstone has been worked can only be realized by a careful survey. The old 
pits lie so closely together, and are so universally found wherever the ironbearing stratum 
occurs, that it is almost possible to map the latter by their indications alone. 
We will first of all indicate the position of the layer of ironstone in the geological 
scale. Resting on rocks of marine origin, that contain all kinds of waifs and strays of 
marine life, is the large series of clays, lime, and sandstones, 1200 ft. thick, that occupy 
the area of the Weald. It was deposited in the ancient estuary of a river that drained 
some great unknown secondary continent. About its middle is a stratum, termed the 
Wadhurst clay, which furnished the two thin bands of ironstone, from which all the iron 
was obtained. These bands are not continuous layers, but consist of nodules, in each of 
which is a fragment of bone or wood, or masses of fresh-water shells, around which the 
ore has been deposited. The shells are of the same familiar forms as those now living in 
our rivers —Paludina Unio, and Cyclas. The fragments of wood belong to the fir tribe, 
and to the same family as the tree-ferns of Australia and New Zealand ; while the re¬ 
mains of the animals belong to the crocodiles, monstrous lizards, allied to the iguana and 
monitor, to the long-necked plesiosaur, and the short-necked ichthyosaur that, in a 
world in which the class Reptilia were dominant, occupied the position and rivalled the 
bulk of whales. On the top of this great mass of river-deposits lie the cretaceous rocks, 
of which the North and South Downs are mere tatters spared by the rains and frosts of 
countless ages. Plutonic action has been very rampant throughout the Wealden area, 
tossing rocks up and throwing them down, and twisting them about in almost every con¬ 
ceivable manner. A few coloured sheets of paper torn to pieces and then crumpled up 
and squeezed into a solid mass, will give an adequate idea of their condition before they 
were brought under atmospheric influences. If we cut valleys in miniature out of the 
mass of paper, the coloured fragments exposed in their sides will represent most accu¬ 
rately the disconnected surfaces of the rocks, laid bare by rain, frost, and the erosive 
action of the streams. The iron-bearing stratum, therefore, does not now form one con¬ 
tinuous mass, but is scattered about in patches, from Tunbridge on the north to Hastings 
on the south, and from Horsham in the west to the old port of Winchelsea in the east. 
Throughout this district are the traces of the old works, consisting of the old embank¬ 
ments of the hammer-ponds, large heaps of scoriae, and the mine-pits, as they are termed, 
from which the ore was obtained. 
The mine-pits are small, circular, or oval depressions, from 3 to 6 ft. wide, and from 
6 to 8 ft. deep. They consist of partially filled up shafts, which varied in depth accord¬ 
ing to the thickness of the clay above the ironstone from 7 or 8 to 40 ft. They lie very 
close together, and are now very generally overgrown with trees; and as the ground they 
occupy is very much broken up, it is not yet brought under cultivation. The method of 
mining was to sink a shaft down to the ironstone, to remove as much ore as was within 
reach, then the shaft was partially filled up, and the operation repeated; and for this 
reason the mine-pits are so numerous and so close together that they bear a strong re¬ 
semblance to the hut-circles within Celtic and Roman forts, such as those of Penknowle 
