-half of the whole quantity of iron produced in England was made
there. Simon Sturtevant, in his 'Treatise of Metallica,' published in
1612, estimates the whole number of iron-mills in England and Wales at
800, of which, he says, "there are foure hundred milnes in Surry, Kent,
and Sussex, as the townsmen of Haslemere have testified and numbered
unto me." But the townsmen of Haslemere must certainly have been
exaggerating, unless they counted smiths' and farriers' shops in the
number of iron-mills. About the same time that Sturtevant's treatise
was published, there appeared a treatise entitled the 'Surveyor's
Dialogue,' by one John Norden, the object of which was to make out a
case against the iron-works and their being allowed to burn up the
timber of the country for fuel. Yet Norden does not make the number of
iron-works much more than a third of Sturtevant's estimate. He says,
"I have heard that there are or lately were in Sussex neere 140 hammers
and furnaces for iron, and in it and Surrey adjoining three or four
glasse-houses." Even the smaller number stated by Norden, however,
shows that Sussex was then regarded as the principal seat of the
iron-trade. Camden vividly describes the noise and bustle of the
manufacture--the working of the heavy hammers, which, "beating upon the
iron, fill the neighbourhood round about, day and night, with continual
noise." These hammers were for the most part worked by the power of
water, carefully stored in the artificial "Hammer-ponds" above
described. The hammer-shaft was usually of ash, about 9 feet long,
clamped at intervals with iron hoops. It was worked by the revolutions
of the water-wheel, furnished with projecting arms or knobs to raise
the hammer, which fell as each knob passed, the rapidity of its action
of course depending on the velocity with which the water-wheel
revolved. The forge-blast was also worked for the most part by
water-power. Where the furnaces were small, the blast was produced by
leather bellows worked by hand, or by a horse walking in a gin. The
foot-blasts of the earlier iron-smelters were so imperfect that but a
small proportion of the ore was reduced, so that the iron-makers of
later times, more particularly in the Forest of Dean, instead of
digging for ironstone, resorted to the beds of ancient scoriae for
their principal supply of the mineral.

Notwithstanding the large number of furnaces in blast throughout the
county of Sussex at the p