Coal was, however, by this time beginning to be recognised as a most valuable and useful article of fuel, and had taken a position in the industrial life of the country from which it was difficult to remove it. Rather than attempt to have arrested the growing use of coal, Parliament would have been better employed had it framed laws compelling the manufacturers and other large burners to consume their own smoke, and instead of aiming at total prohibition, have encouraged an intelligent and more economical use of it. In spite of all prohibition its use rapidly spread, and it was soon applied to the smelting of iron and to other purposes. Iron had been largely produced in the south of England from strata of the Wealden formation, during the existence of the great forest which at one time extended for miles throughout Surrey and Sussex. The discovery of coal, however, and the opening up of many mines in the north, gave an important impetus to the smelting of iron in those counties, and as the forests of the Weald became exhausted, the iron trade gradually declined. Furnace after furnace became extinguished, until in 1809 that at Ashburnham, which had lingered on for some years, was compelled to bow to the inevitable fate which had overtaken the rest of the iron blast-furnaces. In referring to this subject, Sir James Picton says:--"Ironstone of excellent quality is found in various parts of the county, and was very early made use of. Even before the advent of the Romans, the Forest of Dean in the west, and the Forest of Anderida, in Sussex, in the east, were the two principal sources from which the metal was derived, and all through the mediaeval ages the manufacture was continued. After the discovery of the art of smelting and casting iron in the sixteenth century, the manufacture in Sussex received a great impulse from the abundance of wood for fuel, and from that time down to the middle of the last century it continued to flourish. One of the largest furnaces was at Lamberhurst, on the borders of Kent, where the noble balustrade surrounding St Paul's Cathedral was cast at a cost of about £11,000. It is stated by the historian Holinshed that the first cast-iron ordnance was manufactured at Buxted. Two specialities in the iron trade belonged to Sussex, the manufacture of chimney-backs, and cast-iron plates for grave-stones. At the time when wood constituted the fuel the backs of fire-places were frequently ornamented with neat designs. Specimens, both of the chimney-backs and of the monuments, are occasionally met with. These articles were exported from Rye. The iron manufacture, of course, met with considerable discouragement on the discovery of smelting with pit-coal, and the rapid progress of iron works in Staffordshire and the North, but it lingered on until the great forest was cut down and the fuel exhausted."