ness
they have so long shown him.

H. G. N.

_April_, 1866.

THE OLD "BLACK COUNTRY"
OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE;
OR,
AN HISTORICAL RELATION OF THE MINING AND
MAKING OF IRON IN THE FOREST OF DEAN,
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.

If there be one circumstance more than another that has conferred
celebrity on the Forest of Dean, it is _the remote origin_,
_perpetuation_, _and invariably high repute of its iron works_. Uniting
these characteristics in one, it probably surpasses every other spot in
Great Britain.

In the author's former "historical account" of this neighbourhood, he
gave all the information he had then collected relative to the mining and
making of iron therein. Since that time, he has greatly extended his
investigations, especially {1} amongst the records of the Court of
Exchequer. The result is, that he believes he is now enabled to present
to the public the most complete description that has yet appeared of the
manufacture of iron during the Middle Ages, detailing, in the first
place, all the particulars he has gathered of the operations of the
primitive miner, or iron worker, and proceeding, in chronological order,
to the present time.

In the year 1780, wrote Mr. Wyrrall, in his valuable MS. on the ancient
iron works of the Forest:--

"There are, deep in the earth, vast caverns scooped out by men's
hands, and large as the aisles of churches; and on its surface are
extensive labyrinths worked among the rocks, and now long since
overgrown with woods, which whosoever traces them must see with
astonishment, and incline to think them to have been the work of
armies rather than of private labourers. They certainly were the
toil of many centuries, and this perhaps before they thought of
searching in the bowels of the earth for their ore--whither, however,
they at length naturally pursued the veins, as they found them to be
exhausted near the surface."

Such were the remains, as they existed in his day, of the original iron
mines of this locality; and, except where modern operations have
obliterated them, such they continue to the present time.

The fact of their presenting no trace of engineering skill, or of the use
of any kind of machinery, is conclusive of their remote antiquity. Nor
are there any traces of gunpowder having been employed in them; but this,
Mr. John Taylor says, was not reso