nd one at Tintern, making their total number just equal
to that of the then iron-making district of Sussex. In Mr. Taylor's map
of Gloucestershire, published in 1777, iron furnaces, forges, or engines
are indicated at Bishopswood, Lydbrook, The New Wear, Upper Red Brook,
Park End, Bradley, and Flaxley. Yet only a small portion of the mineral
used at these works was obtained from the Dean Forest mines, if we may
judge from the statement made by Mr. Hopkinson, in 1788, before the
Parliamentary Commissioners, to the effect that "there is no regular
iron-mine work now carried on in the said Forest, but there were about
twenty-two poor men who, at times when they had no other work to do,
employed themselves in searching for and getting iron mine or ore in the
old holes and pits in the said Forest, which have been worked out many
years." Such a practice is well remembered by the aged miners, the chief
part of the ore used coming by sea from Whitehaven. Thus Mr. Mushet
represents, "at Tintern the furnace charge for forge pig iron was
generally composed of a mixture of seven-eighths of Lancashire iron ore,
and one-eighth part of a lean calcareous sparry iron ore from the Forest
of Dean, called flux, the average yield of which mixture was fifty per
cent of iron. When in full work, Tintern Abbey charcoal furnace made
weekly from twenty-eight to thirty tons of charcoal forge pig iron, and
consumed forty dozen sacks of charcoal; so that sixteen sacks of charcoal
were consumed in making one ton of pigs." This furnace was, he believes,
"the first charcoal furnace which in this country was blown with air
compressed in iron cylinders."

The year 1795 marks the period when the manufacture of iron was resumed
in the Forest by means of pit coal cokes at Cinderford, the above date
being preserved on an inscription stone in No. 1 furnace. "The
conductors of the work succeeded," in the words of Mr. Bishop,
communicated to the Author, "as to fact, and made pig iron of good
quality; but from the rude and insufficient character of their
arrangements, they failed commercially as a speculation, the quantity
produced not reaching twenty tons per week. The cokes were brought from
Broadmoor in boats, by a small canal, the embankment of which may be seen
at the present day. The ore was carried down to the furnaces on mules'
backs, from Edge Hill and other mines. The rising tide of iron
manufacture in Wales and Staffordshire could not fail to