Transcript

of

Iron Pits

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol. V. (1872), pp. 47-50.

by

P.O. Hutchinson

Prepared by Michael Steer

The Paper was presented at the Association’s July 1872, Exeter meeting. Devon and Cornwall have for centuries been key sources for tin, less well known for the production of iron. In fact Devon’s several iron mines are widely distributed, and remain virtually undeveloped. It appears, however, that reasonably large quantities of iron were acquired in remote antiquity throughout parts of Devon through a primitive process of sinking shallow pits. When one pit was exhausted, then another replaced it. The ore acquired by this simple process was possibly smelted on site. The author particularly mentions examples of these intriguing early iron pits in countryside near Honiton, beside the road running through Combe Raleigh. The Paper, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

The pits commonly called Iron Pits, which are found scattered over many parts of eastern Devonshire, and are met with in several of the other English counties, though by no means recently discovered, have never received the attention they deserve. Despite a considerable amount of mystery and uncertainty that has hung over these places, they appear to be never-the-less rightly named; for notwithstanding that some persons have questioned the motives for which they were originally dug, there seems no doubt now that they were sunk for the purpose of seeking iron ore. By whom, or by what people, they were made, is a question not so easy to answer. In Devonshire they occur mostly, if not entirely, on the hills capped by the Green-sand formation, covered in places by a bed of plastic clay mixed with angular flints. As existing on the Egton and the Goatland Moors, near Whitby, in Yorkshire, they are known as "Killing Pits," and by some are supposed to be the remains of a British village. This impression, if it shows nothing else, proves at all events a belief in their great antiquity. There are 150 or more still to be traced at the former place, and many of them from three to four feet deep.
Within the busy confines of Leeds, it is recorded that in making excavations in Briggate, one of the principal streets, there were found many "Bell Pits," as they were termed, from which the iron stone had been taken. We are further informed that the cemetery at Burmantofts, near the same town of Leeds, has been found to be pitted all over with these holes. In seeking for ore, the excavator seems to have dug a pit about six feet in diameter, though this size of course much varied; and when he came down to the iron stone, he worked away all round as far as he could go without letting the sides fall in. Instead of advancing straight forward, and digging back or throwing back, as the phrase is, or instead of proceeding to make a gallery excavation, as the miners call it, he got out of his pit and then sunk another. [Smile's Industrial Biography.'] This is manifestly a rude and an unscientific mode of mining; but the process on our own hills in Devonshire appears to have been precisely the same as that followed in Yorkshire.
Coming a step nearer, we read in Camden of "Pen pits in a piece of gravelly, clayey waste near the church [of Pen, not far from Mere, in the county of Somerset], forming inverted cones from ten to fifty feet in diameter, and from five to ten at the bottom, upwards of 20,000 in no regular arrangement. The pits are extremely curious," he adds. (1). Perhaps these last, occurring near Mere, if not for iron, may have been made when searching for lapis calaminaris, or oxide of zinc, used in the manufacture of brass, as such a mineral has been found not far from that neighbourhood, at all events in recent times.
There are several places in Derbyshire where heaps of refuse, as from the miners' operations, have been met with, and called "Old Men's Workings."  At Rivaulx, in Yorkshire, and at Hackness, similar remains have been met with; but these latter are not so ancient, apparently, as the diggings elsewhere alluded to, but are rather the traces of works probably carried on by the monks of the neighbouring abbey during the middle ages.
Coming into our own district, it is observed by Lysons, that on the Blackdown Hills there are pits called "iron pits, and by some supposed a British village." However much these pits may resemble the pit dwellings of the ancient Britons, common consent, nevertheless, ascribes them to the operations of the miner. Near Kentisbear, and between Pool, Punchardon, Saint Hill, and Henland, there are numerous hollows, sometimes called "Ash Pits." A farm labourer told me, many years ago, that he once had occasion to cross one part of Punchy Down late in the evening, and that he got entangled in pits and hollows, into which he was continually falling, until he became so bewildered as scarcely to know where he was, or how to extricate himself. On another occasion, when conversing with Samuel White, at Belbury Castle, May 3lst, 1861, he said that when he was a boy (nearly seventy years before), he was walking across the hill, carrying a bundle of "spargads " or sticks used by thatchers to secure the thatch, and he became entangled in the same manner in a labyrinth of pits Mr. James Blackmore, of Clivehays, Church Stanton, writing to Mr. Heineken, August 5th, 1865, on these subjects, observes that all the extent of Blackdown in his neighbourhood was once worked for surface iron, as it was called. "My father," he adds, "a few years since dug out several tons of the ore from a space about ten feet square, and it is now beside the garden wall." At another time he speaks of the pits as being "in thousands." Many of these have been filled in where the land has been reduced to cultivation; but they are brought to light on excavating. There is a grand group of them about half a mile north of Wolford Lodge, and on the Combe Rawleigh side of Dunkeswell Common. Though there are a few hedges running across the top of the hill, and thereby forming large enclosures, the heath, furze, and fern, still grow there as wild as ever. They are at about 150 feet west of the road, and they chiefly occupy an area of some 700 feet across, taken in either direction. They are of different sizes and shapes, more or less round, or oval, or irregular, the sides chiefly sloping from having fallen in. They vary from eight to ten feet deep, and from twenty to thirty in diameter. On actual measurement, one proved to be nineteen feet by twenty-three. Being there with a friend one day, and not wishing to court observation from the road, the horse and carriage were led down to the bottom of one of them, and nothing was visible outside. This will prove the size of some of them at least. At Moorlands, a mile east of Dunkeswell Common, there is another group. Having, some years ago, had a correspondence on these subjects with the late Rev. H. A. Simcoe, I received a letter from him, dated October 22nd, 1862, in which he expresses an intention of having some of the pits on his own land opened; but as he was then in Cornwall, he hoped I would not wait, but that I would prosecute a search amongst them myself. This I did on more occasions than one; but although there was no difficulty in turning up pieces of hœmatite and ironstone, I was not so fortunate as to discover the remains of a forge.  Mr. Simcoe subsequently carried out his intention, but the result was the same.
But there are numerous pieces of scoria to be found in the fields near Northcott, in the parish of Uffculme, some of which I have, indicating that there had been a smelting-place not far off. In a field at Tudborough, near Hemyock, the plough continually turns up cinders, and doubtless there had been a bloomary or melting-pit near them. It seems reasonable to suppose that, though the ore was procured on the hills, the reducing process was carried on in the valleys, perhaps in localities where wood (used in the form of charcoal) was more easily obtained. At Bowerhayes Farm, near Dunkeswell, there were " heaps of cinders," as the informant said. A blacksmith living by the roadside near this place, in answer to questions put to him, said that he had taken some of these cinders and tried them in his forge, but could make nothing of them: and, suiting the action to the word, he took up a clinker, saying, They were very like that, only as big as his head. At Church Stanton, in the Blackdown Hills, there are the remains of several smelting-places, indicated by scoria and slag, and one of them is near the Rectory. If these furnaces consisted in nothing more than a pit in the earth, like the old bloomary, perhaps an examination of them might yield favourable results. It is possible they might yield such objects as pieces of metal, or traces of tools.
There is a group of iron pits on Ottery East Hill, just above Lincombe Farm, in the parish of Sidbury, and at about four miles from Sidmouth, which I have several times had an opportunity of examining. They are about a hundred in number. From the fact that the ore is here found near the surface, these pits are small and shallow compared with those at Wolford Lodge. The farmer who first showed them to me supposed they were something of the nature of rifle-pits, "and used in the wars," as he expressed it. It needs but a glance, however, to perceive what they really are. They yield pieces of ironstone, and this is all they have furnished so far. The bloomary, or place where the reduction of the ore was effected, has hitherto escaped detection. There are some elevations near Kirkstall and Calverly, in Yorkshire, called Cinder Hills, and there is a valley near Church Stanton known as Sindercombe, or Cindercombe; but I do not know how they got their names, or whether any scoria or cinders have ever been found there. It may be further remarked that the various workings above alluded to, and lying as they do in different parts of the country, are uniformly ascribed to a very remote antiquity: nevertheless, there are reasons for supposing that the operations of digging and smelting were continued down to mediaeval times, and possibly in some of these very places. In the neighbourhood of Dunkeswell it is not unlikely that the Monks of the Abbey worked the pits in their day. Had the product of this ore been cast iron, it is hard to imagine how the ancient tribes could have converted it into wrought iron ; but, fortunately for them, the hœmatite and bog iron occurring on these hills, when smelted with charcoal, yield ductile or maleable iron at once.

Reference
(1). "Gough's Camden," Edition of 1806, I. 99; and "Collinson's History," III. 43.