"We have since then considerably improved and enlarged them, and are now employing about 100 hands. We manufacture wire for fencing, as also for telegraph purposes, of which we can roll from 40 to 50 tons per week. We likewise make charcoal iron for horse-nails and smith's work, besides that for agricultural purposes, using the Cinderford, Shropshire, and Staffordshire iron, especially the former." Other works, resembling those just described, are being carried on by Mr. James Russell at the Forest Vale Iron Works, near Cinderford. When perfected, they will employ not less than 60 pairs of hands, and will supply considerable quantities of iron rods for telegraphic and other wire, as well as chain-cable iron, the adjoining furnaces affording the requisite metal. All the iron ore supplied from this neighbourhood to these different works is derived from one or other of the following iron mines, whose present extent may be thus particularized. {61} The _Shake-mantle_, _Buckshraft_, and _St. Annal's_ pits, on the _eastern_ side of the Forest, constitute that exceedingly important range of mining operations, from which the Cinderford furnaces have long obtained their chief supply of iron ore. These are four in number, having a height of 43 feet, an extreme breadth of 14 feet, that of the hearth being 6 feet. They make 500 tons every week of the finest hot-blast iron. A peculiar interest attaches to the first of these three pits, owing to its being the oldest mine still at work in this vicinity, though it dates no earlier than 1829, so recently has iron mining been resumed in this part of the district. Buckshraft was begun in 1835-7, and that at St. Annal's in 1849, each originating in the increasing demand for iron ore at the adjoining blast furnaces. They all descend to the same vein of red hematite, as well as to one common "level." This runs from one to the others, almost in a direct line two miles long. The shafts are severally 70, 160, and 221 yards deep. Upwards of 36,000 tons of rich ore have been annually obtained from these iron mines for many years, leaving a transverse area of cavernous workings about 70 yards wide. But a far greater void was formed by the old miners, whose holes occur immediately above, and in which a few scattered tools have been discovered, left behind when operations were abruptly stopped in 1674, but not before the men had burrowed down some 150 yards. The natural drainage of these mines being towards the Shake-mantle pit, a very powerful pumping engine has been put up there, capable of raising 250 gallons of water to the surface at every stroke. As many as 250 hands are employed in working these valuable iron mines. The _Westbury-brook_ iron mine, so called from its situation near the head of that stream, is one of the most productive pits on the _eastern_ side of the Forest basin.