stirling-1963-vol-1/05_093

Transcription

INTRODUCTION : THE MIDDLE AGES AND LATER
ore for a few hours in a charcoal fire, well surrounded by or bedded into the fuel, and the metal
thus obtained by its reduction can be easily forged at red heat into a bar or iron. No direct
evidence is available for the dating of these remains, and virtually no light has been thrown on
them by studies carried out in the Lake District, where a number of apparently similar sites
have been explored. Thus Collingwood believed that the small bloomeries of that region were
probably mediaeval, ¹ and that, in particular, the older examples near Coniston went back to
a date well before the beginning of the 16th century ²; but an alternative suggestion is that they
may have originated after a Royal decree had put an end, in 1564, to the large organised
"bloomsmithies" of Furness, ³ and there is also some evidence that they may have continued in
use sporadically as late as the 19th century. ⁴ Historical considerations, however, lead to the
conclusion that many or most of the Stirlingshire bloomeries may date from the 17th or earlier
18th century, as this seems to have been the period when the iron industry was prosecuted
most actively in the Highlands. The earliest recorded iron-works in the Highlands were
those set up at Letterewe, in western Ross, in 1607, ⁵ while after the middle of the 18th century
improvements in metallurgical technique led to the progressive replacement of charcoal as the
smelting fuel by coke (supra). The heyday of Highland iron-smelting evidently began in the
second-quarter of the 18th century, when English iron-masters took to shipping their ore to
districts where fuel was available in the form of standing woods, and smelting it there; ⁶ the
earliest furnace of this class was opened at Invergarry in 1727 ⁷ and, though it survived only
until 1736, ⁸ some others having a similar origin continued in operation until well into the 19th
century. ⁹

1 Collingwood, W. G., Lake District History, 122.
2 C.W., old series, xv, 227.
3 Ibid., 216, 221.
4 Ibid., new series, xxii, 90 ff.
5 P.S.A.S., xxi (1886-7), 89.
6 For an account of the Furness ironmasters' operations in Scotland, see Fell, op. cit., 343 ff.
7 Ibid., 347.
8 Ibid., 387.
9 E.g. Goatfield, Loch Fyne, until 1813; Bonawe, Loch Etive, until 1866 (P.S.A.S., xxi (1886-7), 130, 124).

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