ly used, yet how it
was employed can hardly be determined with exactness, except from what is
known of the elementary plans in early use amongst other people, the
Egyptians, for instance, the natives of Central Africa, or the
iron-workers of Madagascar. A strong draught must necessarily have been
made to pass through the ignited fuel, either by placing the furnace so
as to take the wind, or by forming it on the principle of the modern wind
furnace. Or the required blast might have been created by means of
wooden cylinders, or leathern bags, alternately compressed by the hands
or feet. Water-power was rarely, if ever, resorted to at this remote
date, since cinders are seldom found near brooks or streams.

In common with everything else relating to the manufactures of the
kingdom, Domesday Book is silent respecting the mines, iron works, and
miners of the Forest. Adverting, however, to this otherwise invaluable
return, we learn from it that Edward the Confessor was accustomed to
demand from the citizens of Gloucester, "thirty-six dicres of iron, and a
hundred elongated iron rods for bolts for the king's ships,"--(xxxvi.
dicras ferri & c. virgas ferreas ductiles ad clavos navium Regis). The
nearest, and indeed, the only locality, within a distance of many miles,
from whence the forgemen of Gloucester could have obtained their iron,
was this neighbourhood. Hence the metal they used came from the Forest.

Less than a hundred years later, and all doubt on this point is removed
by a notification in the Great Rolls of the Pipe, that 16s. worth of iron
was sent, in 1158, to Wudestock (Woodstock) by the king's order, besides
8s. worth more for repairs at his palace. An observation of Geraldus,
describing the tour he made through Wales in 1188, speaks of the "noble
Forest of Dean, by which Gloucester was amply supplied with iron and
venison." {11a}

The first charter granted to the Abbey of Flaxley, by Henry II., whilst
Duke of Normandy, and therefore previous to 1154, in which year he came
to the throne, specifies an iron work at Edlaud, now Elton, near
Westbury, on the eastern side of the Forest. {11b} His second charter,
when king, is more explicit, and describes "an iron forge, free and quit,
with as free liberty to work as any of his forges in demesne," showing
that he possessed several. The allowance of two oaks per week, wherewith
the monks might feed their forge, although not mentioned until 42 Henry
III. (1258)