ken place for nearly a year. Lancashire ore, which
is brought to Newnham by sea, furnishes the principal supply; the
mine found in the Forest being either too scanty to answer the
expense of raising it, or when raised too difficult of fusion, and
consequently too consumptive of fuel, to allow the common use of it.

"When the furnace is at work, about twenty tons a week are reduced to
pig iron; in this state it is carried to the forges, where about
eight tons a week are hammered out into bars, ploughshares, &c.,
ready for the smith."

Though these operations have been long given up, the furnace buildings
removed, and the pools drained in which the water accumulated for driving
the machinery, yet the old people of the neighbourhood still recollect
when the Castiard's Vale, now wholly devoted to the picturesque,
resounded with the noise of engines. A solitary heap of Lancashire iron
mine alone remains to show what was once operated upon at this spot.

The year 1795 marks the period when the manufacture of iron was resumed
in the Forest by means of pit-coal cokes at Cinderford, the above date
being preserved on an inscription stone in No. 1 furnace. "The
conductors of the work succeeded," in the words of the late Mr. Bishop,
communicated to the author,--

"As to fact, and made pig iron of good quality; but from the rude and
insufficient character of their arrangements, they failed
commercially as a speculation, the quantity produced not reaching
twenty tons per week. The cokes were brought from Broadmoor in
boats, by a small canal, the embankment of which may be seen at the
present day. The ore was carried down to the furnaces on mules'
backs, from Edge Hill and other mines. The rising tide of iron
manufacture in Wales and Staffordshire could not fail to swamp such
ineffectual arrangements, and as a natural consequence Cinderford
sank.

"Attempts still continued to be made from time to time in the
locality, but the want of success, and the loss of large capital,
placed the whole neighbourhood under a ban.

"Moses Teague was the day-star who ushered in a bright morning after
a dark and gloomy night. Great natural genius, combined with a rare
devotion to the interests of the Forest, led him to attempt a
solution of the difficulty. In this he so far succeeded that he
formed a company, consisting of Messrs. Whit