I have now added to the database a full set of 'modern' iron furnaces for the counties of Surrey, Kent, West and East Sussex. The information has been taken from the Wealden Iron Research Group's online database, which contains much more historical information and should be consulted for more details. The term modern is a relative one. No furnace survived beyond the early 19th century, and all sites listed are blast furnace sites, using water-driven bellows. None are pre-Tudor. No bloomeries are listed. I have also added as many minepit locations as I can identify - the majority are shown on three maps in Cleere and Crossley's account of the Wealden iron industry published in the 1980s, but their information was derived from a survey by Worssam published in 1964. A few extra sites have been included which I gleaned using Google, and by identifying minepit place-names. As this is a mining history related website, I have restricted the entries to mine extraction and smelting and have not included the numerous water-powered forge sites that are as abundant as the furnaces. In an attempt to link up the extraction sites with the possibly related furnace sites, I shall add to each minepit location the name of the nearest furnace site. This is based simply on geographical location and not on any documentary link that might exist.

I hope that in a very simple way we can demonstrate the extent of the Wealden iron industry in the 'modern' era. With one short-lived exception (Snape Wood Mine), there has been no iron extraction or smelting done in the Weald for nearly 200 years. The agricultural soils of the Weald are quite poor, and the woods and valleys were pretty much left alone to recover naturally. Although the closure of the furnaces took place fairly gradually over several decades, I can't help but draw some vague parallel with how recently de-industrialised areas of Britain may or may not recover now the heavy industry and mines have closed. Not that the Wealden iron trade employed thousands of men in close-knit communities, but the physical landscape has altered to the extent that you are hard put to realise what it might once have looked like: with extensive woodland coppicing, areas of land pitted with shallow shafts, charcoal burning, the noise of forge hammers in otherwise quiet valleys, and I imagine the pervasive smell of woodsmoke on still days.

It is hard to imagine that at one time this was the heart of the arms industry with heavy naval and other guns being in great demand. One of the principal gun foundries was just 30 minutes walk from my front door. Wealden guns defended England from the Spaniards, French, and other enemies of the realm from the 16th to the 18th century.

Question:
If Wealden guns only protected England what guns protected the rest of us?

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The realm of Tudor England was what was at stake. I don't think they gave a toss for Scotland back then. And I'm not sure they gave too much attention to the plight of the Welsh either. Later furnace production would have been used to fight the French at a time after the union I suppose. And, like today, guns were sold illegally to foreign powers, so maybe some of them were used to sink English ships too.

Given the size and weight of such Iron guns then one can only assume they were pit cast as the iron would have to be poured straight from the furnace and run into the mould(s) as Cupola technology would not exist.

Has any evidence of this survived and what were the moulds made of, clay/sand and were any binding agents/oils used?

Given the size of such guns have any of the runner / riser systems survived and have any patterns been discovered? from a casting point of view these guns would need to quite well patterned and given the absence of efficient machine tools one wonders how the bore was cored within the mould, it could not have been machined from solid.... the bore is likely to have needed some level of finishing even if basic so I wonder if they used stones.... ??

In terms of the furnaces themselves is there any idea of the weight of iron smelted in one go (ie 1 load = 1 cannon) ?

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Straker was the first to publish a detailed account of the industry, in 1931. More recently, Cleere and Crossley have also written a good account. However, I only have Straker to refer to, so here are his answers to your questions.

The process of gunfounding in the Weald, he claims, was never published, it being a closely guarded secret. Fragmets of moulds are found at the various foundry sites. These suggest that the loam process was used and there is no evidence of casting in sand. He says that the process was adapted from bell founding, and never changed.

Guns were originally cast hollow, but later a process for casting solid was introduced and the castings were then bored out. There are records of several boring mills connected with furnaces.

The largest Tudor ordnance was the Cannon Royal which weighed in at 8000 pounds, and were 8ft 6in long. However there is no record of guns larger than 32 pounders being cast in the Weald. These weighed in at 4000 pounds and were 11ft long.

More is known of the particulars of the 17th century founders but the process seems to have remained much the same.

A boring machine, either original or a replica, can be seen in the Anne of Cleves museum in Lewes.

Thanks for that.... Do we know approx when boring started as this has a bearing on something else I'm looking at re early machinery... ? 🙂

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Straker says that in France boring of cannons was introduced by Maritz, a Swiss, in 1713. But it was probably done "much earlier" in Sussex. The term "boring-place" appears in a 1677 deed for Ashburnham and a lawsuit of 1680 describes a newly renamed "Boring Pond".

Hobhouse, in "The Seeds of Wealth" ISBN 0-330-48812-0 attributes some weight to the great virtue of English ordnance and the prime cause being the high phosphorous, Sussex ore, which also contained other trace elements and which prevented crystalline faults developing during the cooling process after casting. The cooling process was uncontrolled and unappreciated at the time, the whole process being entirely arcane. He further suggests that this chemical advantage, having started at the time of Henry VIII, continued until iron gave way to steel ordnance in the 1870's.

I noticed a recent BBC news story of an Elizabethan gun that had been recently cast and tested (i.e. a replica of one dredged off the sea bed), which was supposed to be revolutionary in its day. The bore was made very precisely, and the shot made to fit so well that the power of the gun was so greatly increased above its predecessors it was capable of far greater destruction than anything in use by other nations at the time. I suppose this meant that a ship could carry more guns and smaller guns, and still pack a huge punch in comparison with what had come before.

OK, not quite the story as I thought, but

Here it is:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7899831.stm 

"Replicas were recreated in a modern foundry, and tests carried out for the Timewatch documentary showed that the Elizabethans were throwing shot at almost the speed of sound.

Elizabeth's "supergun", although relatively small, could hit a target a mile away. At a ship-to-ship fighting distance of about 100 yards, the ball would have sufficient punch to penetrate the oak planks of a galleon, travelling across the deck and out the other side.

Elizabeth's navy worked out that a few big guns were less effective than a lot of small guns, all the same, all firing at once."

One other feature of the iron industry in the Weald was the re-smelting of Roman bloomery slags. There was a lot of ironmaking activity under the Romans, but the bloomery process as carried out by slaves was wretchedly inefficient, with a great deal of the iron from the ore ending up as iron oxide in the slag (You don't tend to see this in pre- or post-Roman bloomery slags - the difference between using free skilled labour and unfree unskilled....)

So, with the onset of the blast furnace with its higher temperatures and greater efficiency, it was found that it was possible to re-smelt these slags and recover the "lost" iron, and the Roman slags were lying around in great heaps for the taking!

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That might explain why I have not found mention of many minepits in the area north of Hastings where there are several furnaces.

It seems that a lot of Roman slag was taken away in the 19th century and used for nothing more useful than road surfacing.

OK, not quite the story as I thought, but

Here it is:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7899831.stm 

"Replicas were recreated in a modern foundry,

Roy Fellows has a couple of canons in his front garden. Perhaps he would like to give us a demonstration?

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There are many, many bloomery sites identified throughout the Weald. Here is a film of a recent reconstruction. I love that rhythm!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP4DjM3jBsw