ABSTRACT
At the present time the mineral district of South Staffordshire and East Worcestershire is entitled to rank as the oldest iron manufacturing centre. This important trade was one of remarkably slow growth, considering the vast quantities of coal and ironstone which the British rocks have contained. It is well known that the Romans were acquainted with the principal spots where iron ore could be obtained, and they also manufactured iron extensively, as is evident from the mounds of scoriæ and cinders containing Roman remains which have been discovered in the Forest of Dean and other districts. * The English manufacture seems to have been first located in Sussex, where the abundance of wood afforded facilities for smelting the ores which are found in that district. Camden states that this county was, in his time, “full of iron mines everywhere, for the casting of which there are furnaces up and down the country;” he also mentions Yorkshire and South Staffordshire as iron-producing districts. At this period the ore was reduced entirely by means of charcoal, and hence large quantities of wood were annually consumed in the neighbourhood of the iron furnaces. The rapid destruction of forest-land caused by this manufacture naturally produced some apprehension as to the future supply of fuel for general purposes, and in order to economise the wood, various legal enactments were put in force. About this time, however, the attention of Dud Dudley, a Staffordshire ironmaster of that period, was directed to the feasibility of using pit-coal instead of charcoal for smelting purposes. The town of Dudley had, even at that early period, attained to some importance as a manufacturing centre, nails, horseshoes, locks, and iron being extensively made in the vicinity. The substitution of coal for wood charcoal in the iron furnaces was first attempted at Dud Dudley's furnaces, on Pensnett Chase, and afterwards at Cradley, where a furnace was erected in which pit-coal was exclusively consumed. But reverses of various kinds prevented the development of the iron trade, notwithstanding the important discoveries which Dudley had made. His new method of smelting iron enabled him to manufacture the finished article much cheaper than the charcoal masters could, and hence all his undertakings were met by a determined resistance on the part of the neighbouring manufacturers. The elements, also, seemed to war against him, for a great flood, unprecedented in the history of the district, swept away his works at Cradley. These he quickly replaced, but the hostility of the charcoal masters succeeded in driving him from place to place, so that he had little chance of following up the important discoveries which he had made. We find him establishing a furnace at Himley, then another near Sedgley, where he asserts that he succeeded in turning out seven tons of iron per week. His new works were, however, scarcely completed, when a mob, instigated by his opposing manufacturers, attacked the place, and quickly laid the whole in ruins. For many years this persecuted inventor passed a chequered existence. He repeatedly solicited the Crown to grant him a renewal of his patent; but the civil wars diverted general attention from manufactures and commerce, and we find Dudley doing active service in the Royalist cause. Soon after the Restoration, he again settled in Staffordshire, at Green's Lodge, Kingswinford, and he states that near it were four forges—Green's Forge, Swin Forge, Heath Forge, and Cradley Forge, where he was practising his “perfect invention.”
