The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 286 • Kate Clark
Archaeological survey and excavation of charcoal furnaces in the ore-bearing areas of Sussex,
Kent and Surrey, such as that at a sixteenth-century furnace at Chingley in Kent (Cleere and
Crossley 1985), have shown how such furnaces developed and operated in the area where they
were first introduced from Europe. It has been demonstrated that the use of blast furnaces
spread from there to the Midlands, Wales in the seventeenth century, and only much later into the
Forest of Dean, where bloomeries persisted until c.1700. This is a pattern that illustrates a very
common phenomenon in the industrial period—namely that the adoption of new technology
within an industry is rarely automatic, nor is the spread of technology to new places a steady or
straightforward process.
The transition from charcoal smelting to coke smelting, often held to be one of the major
factors behind increased iron production during the eighteenth century, is an equally complex
process. In 1709, Abraham Darby began to smelt iron using coke rather than charcoal at an old
charcoal furnace at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire that he adapted for the purpose (Clark 1993).
However, it is important to note that the iron Darby produced was suitable for castings, but could
not be converted into the more flexible wrought iron. It was not until much later that a means of
using coke to produce iron that could be converted to wrought iron was discovered, and coke
production began to expand rapidly. The transition is illustrated in archaeological excavations at
Rockley in Yorkshire (Crossley 1990, 166), where the site of a seventeenth-century water-powered
bloomery was reopened and used with coke in the late eighteenth century. In some areas, such as
Furness in Cumbria, coppicewood for charcoal production was plentiful, and charcoal iron smelting
persisted until 1867.
A number of charcoal or coke iron furnaces survive across Britain, but the furnace was only
one element in a working industrial complex that would have included casting houses, blacking
mills, grinding mills for cleaning off castings, pattern-making shops and offices, almost all of
which have now disappeared. One of the best preserved charcoal iron complexes is that at Bonawe,
Argyll, where buildings for storing charcoal and ore survive, as well as the furnace and associated
water power system (Figure 16.3). Archaeological excavations over a large area at Newdale in
Shropshire illustrated the extent of a works devoted to remelting iron for castings— the site
included back-to-back workers’ cottages, air furnaces, a casting building and forge, all without
any form of water power.
Steel was essential for producing
sharp blades. Most steel was
imported until the introduction in the
seventeenth century of a German
method of cementation that has
since been identified from
excavations at Derwentcote in Co.
Durham. Crucible steel production
(where metal is heated in pots) can
be seen at Abbeydale Forge in
Sheffield, but steel was produced
only on a very large scale, and thus
cheaply after the introduction of the
Bessemer converter in 1856.
Figure 16.3 Ironworks at Bonawe, Argyll.
Source: Kate Clark
Non-ferrous metals
As with iron, the exploitation of nonferrous
metals expanded greatly