, and one at Tintern, making their total number just equal
to that of the then iron-making district of Sussex. In Mr. Taylor's map
of Gloucestershire, published in 1777, iron furnaces, forges, or engines
are indicated at Bishopswood, Lydbrook, the New Wear, Upper Red Brook,
Park End, Bradley, and Flaxley. Yet only a small portion of the mineral
used at these works was obtained from the Dean Forest mines, if we may
judge from the statement made by Mr. Hopkinson, in 1788, before the
Parliamentary Commissioners, to the effect that "there is no regular iron
mine work now carried on in the said Forest, but there were about
twenty-two poor men who, at times when they had no other work to do,
employed themselves in searching for and getting iron mine or ore in the
old holes and pits in the said Forest, which have been worked out many
years." Such a practice is well remembered by the aged miners, the chief
part of the ore used in the above-named furnaces having been brought by
sea from Whitehaven. {54} Thus Mr. Mushet represents, "at Tintern the
furnace charge for forge pig iron was generally composed of a mixture of
seven-eighths of Lancashire iron ore and one-eighth part of a lean
calcareous sparry iron ore, from the Forest of Dean, called flux, the
average yield of which mixture was fifty per cent. of iron. When in full
work, Tintern Abbey charcoal furnace made weekly from twenty-eight to
thirty tons of charcoal forge pig iron, and consumed forty dozen sacks of
charcoal; so that sixteen sacks of charcoal were consumed in making one
ton of pigs." This furnace was, he believes, "the first charcoal furnace
which in this country was blown with air compressed in iron cylinders."

Flaxley was one of the very last places where iron was made in the old
way. The Rev. T. Budge, writing at the commencement of the present
century, says of it:--

"The iron manufactory is still carried on, and the metal is esteemed
peculiarly good; but its goodness does not arise from any
extraordinary qualities in the ore, but from the practice of working
the furnace and forges with charcoal wood, without any mixture of
pit-coal.

"The quantity of charcoal required is so considerable that the
furnace cannot be kept in blow or working more than nine months
successively, the wheels which work the bellows and hammers being
turned by a powerful stream of water. At this time (28th Oct. 1802)
a cessation has ta