The ore, when dug, was
transported, most probably on horses' backs, to the adjacent districts
for the convenience of fuel. For it was easier to carry the mineral to
the wood--then exclusively used for smelting'--than to bring the wood
to the mineral. Hence the numerous heaps of scoriae found in the
neighbourhood of Leeds,--at Middleton, Whitkirk, and Horsforth--all
within the borough. At Horsforth, they are found in conglomerated
masses from 30 to 40 yards long, and of considerable width and depth.
The remains of these cinder-beds in various positions, some of them
near the summit of the hill, tend to show, that as the trees were
consumed, a new wind furnace was erected in another situation, in order
to lessen the labour of carrying the fuel. There are also deposits of
a similar kind at Kirkby Overblow, a village a few miles to the
north-east of Leeds; and Thoresby states that the place was so called
because it was the village of the "Ore blowers,"--hence the corruption
of "Overblow." A discovery has recently been made among the papers of
the Wentworth family, of a contract for supplying wood and ore for iron
"blomes" at Kirskill near Otley, in the fourteenth century;[3] though
the manufacture near that place has long since ceased.

Although the making of iron was thus carried on in various parts of
England in the Middle Ages, the quantity produced was altogether
insufficient to meet the ordinary demand, as it appears from our early
records to have long continued one of the principal articles imported
from foreign countries. English iron was not only dearer, but it was
much inferior in quality to that manufactured abroad; and hence all the
best arms and tools continued to be made of foreign iron. Indeed the
scarcity of this metal occasionally led to great inconvenience, and to
prevent its rising in price Parliament enacted, in 1354, that no iron,
either wrought or unwrought, should be exported, under heavy penalties.
For nearly two hundred years--that is, throughout the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries--the English market was principally supplied with
iron and steel from Spain and Germany; the foreign merchants of the
Steelyard doing a large and profitable trade in those commodities.
While the woollen and other branches of trade were making considerable
progress, the manufacture of iron stood still. Among the lists of
articles, the importation of which was prohibited in Edward IV.'s
reign, with a view to the