metals in focus Theforgottenfurnace?
The industrial revolution first sparked alight in Britain, yet one of the oldest surviving–perhaps themost ancient– blast furnace buildings has been swathed in scaffolding and polythene for at least a decade. It’s a sad fate for a very rare 17th-century survival that is of real national importance.On these pages, ‘Cornerstone’ looks atmetals, the currentwave of thefts and the role of copper in the life ofWilliamMorris, SPAB’s founder. First,what’s to become ofGunnsMill,Gloucestershire–a relic of industrial ironworking in the earlymodern period–asks Robin Stummer
late 15th century the process – by which air is pumped fromgiant bellows through amixture of iron ore and a flammable component such as coal or charcoal – was being used to produce higher grades of iron in larger quantities than hitherto possible. As a result, the commercial attraction of iron production increased greatly, and the quantities of pig iron produced, if tiny compared with 19th-century achievements, grew throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. GunnsMill, in the Forest of Dean
S
nearMitcheldean, is, says English Heritage, a key part of the nation’s industrial heritage. It is a blast furnace that dates back to at least 1629. There is some doubt over the
origins of the structure. Itmay have begun life in the late 1500s as a conventional cornmill, and it certainly did eventually become a papermill, but formuch of the 17th and early 18th centuries it was home to a blast furnace whichmade use of a hugely abundant local fuel, charcoal. A 22ft diameter water wheel, powered froma small brook, operated a giant pair of bellows. The lower, older portion of themill
is built fromcoursed squared rubble with ashlar dressings. The list descriptionmentions that it is “the best remaining furnace of the earliest phase of British blast-furnace practice”. Historically, GunnsMillmay be very
ynonymous with the dark, satanicmills of the Georgian and Victorian ages, blast furnaces had begun to appear in England centuries earlier. As long ago as the
Facing page, under the sheeting at Gunns Mill this August. Clearly, maintenance is overdue. This page (from top), the mill in the 1990s; as it is now; and its structure
significant indeed. In 2000, the journal of the HistoricalMetallurgy Society reported that themillmay have taken its name froma large contract fromthe States General of Holland, entered into in 1629, for casting 610 guns for its warships. A Victorian history of the Forest of Deanmentions the discovery at themill of “an ancient piece of ordnance”. Astonishingly, the date 1682 has been identified on an iron lintel in the building. A Scheduled AncientMonument,
and Grade II* listed, GunnsMill is privately owned. It is on the local authority Buildings at Risk register. In 1986 a Listed Building Consent application for conversion to residential use was refused on the grounds that the proposed works were “detrimental to the character and fabric of the Listed Building, and prejudicial to the setting of an ancientmonument”. It is believed that the timber-framed
upper portion of the building was added in the first half of the 18th century, during its time as a papermill. By the 1950s it had become derelict, Around 10 years ago English
Heritage carried out a condition survey, and enacted an emergency repairs schedule. The building was scaffolded, and protected under polythene sheets. The intention was to secure a viable future for the building, and its repair. However, since then no repair work
has taken place, and parts of Gunns Mill have become overgrown, and its
Cornerstone, Vol 32, No 3 2011 51
JOHN LAWRENCE
JOHN LAWRENCE
JOHN LAWRENCE
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