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CHAPTER II
MINING—IRON

Iron has been worked in Britain from the earliest historical times, and flint implements have been found at Stainton-in-Furness and at Battle in Sussex in positions suggesting that ironworks existed in those places at the end of the Stone Age.[65] Julius Cæsar relates that iron was produced along the coast of Britain, but only in small quantities, its rarity causing it to be considered as a precious metal, so that iron bars were current among the natives as money. The coming of the Romans soon changed this. They were not slow to see the value of the island's mineral wealth and to turn it to account. Ironworks sprang up all over the country: at Maresfield in Sussex they were apparently in full swing by the time of Vespasian (died A.D. 79), and in the neighbourhood of Battle fifty years later. Even more important were the workings in the West, on the banks of the Wye and in the Forest of Dean. Near Coleford have been found remains of Roman mines with shallow shafts and adits, while round Whitchurch, Goodrich, and Redbrook are enormous deposits of 'cinders,' or slag, dating from the same period.[66] Ariconium, near Ross, was a city of smiths and forgemen; and Bath (Aquae Sulis) is often said to have had a 'collegium fabricensium,' or gild of smiths, as one of its members, Julius Vitalis, armourer of the 20th Legion, dying after nine years' service, was given a public funeral here by his gild; but it seems more probable that the seat of the gild was at Chester, and that Julius had come to Bath for his health.[67]

It is a most remarkable fact that although abundant circumstantial evidence of the Roman exploitation of British iron exists in the shape of coins and other relics found upon the site of the works, there is practically no trace of any such working during the Saxon period until shortly before the Conquest. The furnaces must have been still in blast when the Saxons landed; they were a warlike race, possessing a full appreciation of iron and something of the Scandinavian admiration for smithcraft, yet there is hardly a trace of their having worked iron in this country. Few, if any, objects definitely assignable to this period have been found upon the site of iron works, and documentary evidence is almost non-existent. There is a charter of Oswy, King of Kent, given in 689, by which he grants to the abbey of St. Peter of Canterbury land at Liminge 'in which there is known to be a mine of iron';[68] and there is the legend that about 700 A.D. Alcester, in Warwickshire, was the centre of busy ironworks, peopled with smiths, who, for their hardness of heart in refusing to listen to St. Egwin, and endeavouring to drown his voice by beating on their anvils, were swallowed up by the earth;[69] but the rest is silence, until we come to the time of Edward the Confessor. The Domesday Survey shows that in the time of the Confessor, Gloucester rendered as part of its farm 36 dicres of iron, probably in the form of horseshoes, and 100 rods suitable for making bolts for the king's ships,[70] while from Pucklechurch in the same country came yearly 90 'blooms' of iron.[71] The same Survey mentions that there were six smiths in Hereford, each of whom had yearly to make for the king 120 horseshoes, and it also refers to iron mines on the borders of Cheshire, in Sussex and elsewhere.

During the twelfth century the industry appears to have expanded. In the North, at Egremont, we read of the grant of an iron mine to the monks of St. Bees,[72] and at Denby a similar grant was made about 1180 by William FitzOsbert to the abbey of Byland.[73] In Derbyshire, towards the end of the century, Sir Walter de Abbetoft gave to the monks of Louth Park wood at Birley in Brampton and two smithies, namely one bloomery and one forge, with the right to take beech and elm for fuel.[74] But it was in the south-west that the greatest development took place. During the whole of this century the Forest of Dean was the centre of the iron industry, and played the part that Birmingham has played in more recent times. All through the reign of Henry II. the accounts of the sheriffs of Gloucester[75] tell of a constant output of iron, both rough and manufactured, iron bars, nails, pickaxes, and hammers sent to Woodstock, Winchester, and Brill, where the king was carrying out extensive building operations, horseshoes supplied to the army, arrows and other warlike materials despatched to France, spades, pickaxes, and other miners' tools provided for the Irish expedition of 1172, iron bought for the Crusade which Henry projected, but did not live to perform, and 50,000 horseshoes made for the actual Crusade of Richard I. Throughout the thirteenth century the Forest of Dean retained its practical monopoly of the English iron trade, so far at least as the southern counties were concerned, and during the whole of that time members of the family of Malemort were employed at a forge near the castle of St. Briavels turning out enormous stores of bolts for cross-bows and other war material.