The mining and working of iron made Sussex the foremost industrial county of England from Tudor days almost to the dawn of the Victorian Era.

The ore lay in great quantities throughout the Weald, and its manufacture was made possible by the vast forest covering Sussex and Kent. Iron was worked by the Britons; the Romans developed the process on a great scale, and for centuries the old cinder refuse left on the site of their labours afforded material for the making and maintenance of roads.

The earliest record of later days dates back to the time of Henry the Third, who taxed every load of Sussex iron to rebuild the walls of Lewes after the battle there in 1266. A quarter of a century later Master Henry of Lewes furnished the ironwork for Henry's monument in Westminster Abbey.

Sussex iron shed the horses of the army Edward the Second led into Scotland. Commerce in Sussex iron attained its greatest dimensions in Tudor and Stuart days. Not only did the county furnish England with bells for its churches, with firebacks and irons for its hearths, gates and railings for its parks, and monuments for its graves, but with guns to fight the Spaniards.

The first cannon ever made in England was produced in 1543 at Buxted. Elizabeth fought the Armada with Sussex guns. Various Laws directed against the practice were passed, to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, for complaint as to this unpatriotic energy of the first of the armament firms recurs again and again. So, too, do the official denunciations of the wasteful consumption of the forests.

Banded cannon made in Sussex

The only fuel available was timber, which, burnt in its natural state or converted into charcoal, ate up the sylvan glories of the Weald. It is evident from documents still existing that some farseeing ironmasters grew timber for future furnaces as their descendants grew oaks for ships.

The only prime mover available for the lessening of human labour was the brook and rivulet, and to this fact we owe some of the handsomest sheets of water still remaining in Sussex. The practice was to choose a site in the neighbourhood of a stream flowing through a valley, and to throw a dam across the stream to create an artificial lake.

The outflow was controlled by masonry, which conducted the water in regulated quantities over a wheel, which was placed, of course, at a lower level than the pond. The wheel actuated by the water turned a crank to raise up and thrust down the great hammers. Practically every stream near the widespread beds of ore was utilised. At the beginning of the 17th century 140 hammer ponds existed in Sussex.

Much beautiful Sussex ironwork still remains in England, treasures of a craft that produced many rough artists. Sussex churches and old homes abound in their beautiful work. The most memorable product of the Sussex hammer ponds is the ironwork screen of St Paul's, which, in the hands of Jean Tijou, who revolutionised the ironworker's art in England and set a standard never excelled, is one of the glories of Wren's cathedral. The iron railings and balustrade which surrounded the cathedral were made at Lamberhurst on the Kent border.

Their weight, including seven gates, exceeded 200 tons; their cost was £11,202. Lamberhurst furnace was indeed a devourer of forests, consuming 200,000 loads of timber a year. Legal prohibitions had no effect in checking the burning of trees for making iron. It was the discovery of coal in the north, side by side with boundless ore there. which killed the trade of the Weald.

Having lasted as a great industry from before the Armada until after Waterloo, Sussex ironworking came to an end at Wadhurst when the last Wealden furnace was put out in 1828; it had lingered on till then. Every landowner whose estate lay near the deposits of ore was an ironmaster, and rectors had their tithes from iron as from corn. Small families grew to wealth and power on the iron beneath their fields.

With the passing of the trade great houses that had been notable and wealthy for centuries decayed and sank into oblivion. Today the old hammer ponds, once noisy with the roar of industry, are the home of Lilies and rushes and wild birds that have brought back nature and solitude to the scene of one of the strangest chapters in the history of industrial England.

 

 

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