Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool MakersSmiles, Samuel
History
Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers
Smiles, Samuel
Industrial arts -- Biography; Iron industry and trade -- Great Britain -- Biography
would be no available fuel left within practicable reach of the
metropolis; and the contingency of having to face the rigorous cold of
an English winter without fuel naturally occasioning much alarm, the
action of the Government was deemed necessary to remedy the apprehended
evil.
To check the destruction of wood near London, an Act was passed in 1581
prohibiting its conversion into fuel for the making of iron within
fourteen miles of the Thames, forbidding the erection of new ironworks
within twenty-two miles of London, and restricting the number of works
in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, beyond the above limits. Similar
enactments were made in future Parliaments with the same object, which
had the effect of checking the trade, and several of the Sussex
ironmasters were under the necessity of removing their works elsewhere.
Some of them migrated to Glamorganshire, in South Wales, because of the
abundance of timber as well as ironstone in that quarter, and there set
up their forges, more particularly at Aberdare and Merthyr Tydvil. Mr.
Llewellin has recently published an interesting account of their
proceedings, with descriptions of their works,[12] remains of which
still exist at Llwydcoed, Pontyryns, and other places in the Aberdare
valley. Among the Sussex masters who settled in Glamorganshire for the
purpose of carrying on the iron manufacture, were Walter Burrell, the
friend of John Ray, the naturalist, one of the Morleys of Glynde in
Sussex, the Relfes from Mayfield, and the Cheneys from Crawley.
Notwithstanding these migrations of enterprising manufacturers, the
iron trade of Sussex continued to exist until the middle of the
seventeenth century, when the waste of timber was again urged upon the
attention of Parliament, and the penalties for infringing the statutes
seem to have been more rigorously enforced. The trade then suffered a
more serious check; and during the civil wars, a heavy blow was given
to it by the destruction of the works belonging to all royalists, which
was accomplished by a division of the army under Sir William Waller.
Most of the Welsh ironworks were razed to the ground about the same
time, and were not again rebuilt. And after the Restoration, in 1674,
all the royal ironworks in the Forest of Dean were demolished, leaving
only such to be supplied with ore as were beyond the forest limits; the
reason alleged for this measure being lest the iron manufacture should
endanger the supply of timber required for shipbuilding and other
necessary purposes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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