Henry Cort at Funtley & Gosport 1780-90

This lecture explored the freight of iron on the river Severn. Pig iron was sent up the river from the 1610s for forges to fine. Bar iron came down the river from Shropshire by the 1630s. Much of this iron was processed in the Stour valley in north Worcestershire and then manufactured into ironware in the Black Country. The paper describes briefly iron production in all these areas and how Midlands ironware reached London from the 1610s.

2010

Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, 2007

Baltic iron had come to dominate the British market because of the incapacity of Britain's own forge sector. British ironmasters lacked the energy resources to keep pace with the heightening demand for malleable iron on their domestic market. Some ironmasters sought to overcome this de� ciency by organisational means. They hoped to raid the abundant energy reserves of British North America by transferring the preliminary stages of the production chain to the colonies. An Atlantic iron trade, with smelting out-sourced to the charcoal-rich plantations, would be a reproof to the 'Ignorance & wrong reasonings' of those Swedish ministers who maintained 'that England can not be without their Iron'. 1 That hope was, as we have seen, thwarted. The alternative to organisational re-jigging was technological transformation. Technological revolution there was, as every textbook on British economic history makes clear. Smelting with coke and the development of coal-� red re� ning methods, most notably Henry Cort's puddling technique, freed the British iron industry from its dependence upon vegetable fuel in spectacular fashion. Yet technological change could not be conjured up at will. The development of effective coal-based technologies was a drawn-out, tortuous business. Some elements of the 'coal technology package' were present by the � rst decade of the eighteenth century, but it was not until the 1790s that the iron industry turned fully to a mineral fuel platform. Indeed, it was not until the Napoleonic era that the combination of coke smelting, puddling furnaces, rolling mills, and steam power became the industry standard. Because of this, Baltic iron remained fundamental to the British economy in the early stages of industrialisation. Baltic iron, it should be recalled, did not reach its peak on the British market until 1793. It was only in the years after 1800, when tariff barriers against foreign iron were ratcheted up, that the fate of Russian and Swedish iron was sealed.

Transactions of Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society XXXVIII (1999 for 1996-7), 59-76

The iron industry in south Staffordshire was concentrated in a few businesses from the early years of the 17th century, involving at various times Lord Dudley, and members of the Parkes, Foley, Chetwynd and Jennens familes. The slitting mill was introduced to the area by Colman and Chedtwynd by 1611

2004

Wrought-iron manufacture in Shropshire is studied over three centuries, encompassing changes in technology arising from the use of vegetable and subsequently mineral fuel. It describes the charcoal-using forges of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, discussing their rural locations on tributaries of the River Severn, and their principal market in the Midland manufacturing district. Comparison with other ironworking districts establishes that the industry had a regional rather than a national base. Early processes using coal and coke are discussed, in particular the patent awarded to Thomas and George Cranage, two Shropshire workmen, in 1766, before the adoption of the puddling process in the late eighteenth century. The industry in the nineteenth century is discussed with reference to the market and workplace structure, examining their influence on the technology of iron production. In the light of this, it is argued that in the nineteenth century ironmaking retained a strong regional character, structured by particular historic and geographic circumstances, and that national trends offer a limited understanding of the industry in that period. The thesis also challenges conventional interpretations of technological change, whereby new technology replaces old, arguing for increasing technological diversity until the decline of ironmaking in the late nineteenth century.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2007

HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives| 4.0 International License "Valley of the First Iron Masters". Recent research on Iron Age iron production and its significance in the

The production of iron in Anglo-Saxon England is little understood due to the lack of evidence. There are less than a dozen iron smelting sites known. This is a distinct contrast to the wealth of evidence of iron smelting during the Roman period. Should we believe that the Anglo-Saxon world was relying on recycled Roman iron? The absence of evidence should not be taken as the evidence of absence. Instead, we can look towards contemporary archaeological examples and ethnography to try and explain the production of iron and the movement of ferrous objects. This paper will argue that the production of iron was located outside the settlement. Not only does this activity occupy the periphery of the physical and cultural landscape, it was embedded in the liminal zone between reality and myth. Blacksmiths were feared for their art was associated with magic. The evidence of their mobility in north-west Europe emphasises how marginal they were in society, along with their goods. The value of items coming from the ‘outside’ was heightened as they came from the distant unknown, the unfamiliar. In order to understand the dynamic role of iron in AngloSaxon society, we must review the negative evidence of iron smelting, and the evidence for smithing. This should be considered with reference to the literary evidence available to us in the context of the Migration period in northwest Europe. Iron production in early Anglo-Saxon England should also be sought after using archaeological prospection techniques.Über die Eisenherstellung im Angelsächsischen England ist bisher aufgrund fehlender Funde wenig bekannt. Es sind weniger als zwölf Eisenproduktionsstätten nachgewiesen. Dies steht in starkem Kontrast zu den zahlreichen Beweisen für Eisenschmelzen in der Römischen Eisenzeit. Sollten wir wirklich glauben, dass Angelsachsen auf wiederverwendetes römisches Eisen angewiesen waren? Dass bisher keine Belege vorliegen, schließt deren Existenz noch lange nicht aus. Statt ihrer können zeitgleiche archäologische Beispiele und ethnographische Untersuchungen genutzt werden, um die Produktion von Eisen und Zirkulation von Eisenobjekten zu erklären. In diesem Artikel wird die Auffassung vertreten, dass die Eisenherstellung außerhalb von Siedlungen stattfanden. Diese Tätigkeiten waren nicht nur räumlich am Rande der kulturell erschlossenen Landschaft, sondern auch im übertragenen Sinne zwischen der realen Welt und der Welt der Magie und Mythen angesiedelt. Schmiede waren gefürchtet, da ihre Kunst mit Magie assoziiert war; ihre in Nordwesteuropa nachgewiesene Mobilität weist auf ihre Randstellung in der Gesellschaft hin. Der Wert ihrer Erzeugnisse wurde dadurch aufgewertet, dass sie von außerhalb kamen, aus der unbekannten Ferne. Um die dynamische Rolle von Eisen in der angelsächsischen Gesellschaft zu verstehen, ist es notwendig, das Fehlen von Belegen für Eisenherstellung neu zu bewerten und den wenigen Hinweisen auf Schmieden nachzugehen. Das sollte mit Bezug auf völkerwanderungszeitliche Textquellen aus Nordwesteuropa erfolgen. Weiterhin sollte Eisenproduktion im frühen Angelsächsischen England mithilfe archäologischer Prospektion erforscht werden.

Historical Metallurgy, 2015

The foundry trade developed as a separate branch of the iron industry in the first half of the 18th century. It mostly used coke pig iron, which was produced at Coalbrookdale and in a small number of other furnaces. This was rendered possible by Sir Clement Clerke’s development of the air furnace for remelting pig iron and of Abraham Darby’s patented method of casting pots in green sand. This paper considers the spread of coke smelting and of foundries with air furnaces in the 18th century, which are closely related to each other. It ends by looking briefly at unresolved issues in the origins of the later foundry cupola.

Current Anthropology, 2000

Accounts survive for bloomery that operated in Clun Park, near Llantrisant, Glamorgan in the 1530s. At the end of the century, a blast furnace was built nearby. The article considers both ironworks and 19th century and later mentions of them