Iron Manufactures of Sussex.
Sir,--I have made two extracts from a once popular, but now forgotten
work, illustrative of the iron manufacture which, within the last
hundred years, had its main seat in this county, which I think may be
interesting to many of your readers who may have seen the review of Mr.
Lower's _Essay on the Ironworks of Sussex_ in the recent numbers of the
_Athenæum_ and _Gentleman's Magazine_. The anecdote at the close is
curious, as confirming the statements of Macaulay; the roads in Sussex
in the 18th century being much in the condition of the roads in England
generally in the 17th. "Sowsexe," according to the old proverb, has
always been "full of dirt and mier."
"From hence (Eastbourne) it was that, turning north, and
traversing the deep, dirty, but rich part of these two counties
(Kent and Sussex), I had the curiosity to see the great
foundries, or ironworks, which are in this county (Sussex), and
where they are carried on at such a prodigious expense of wood,
that even in a county almost all overrun with timber, they begin
to complain of their consuming it for those furnaces and leaving
the next age to want timber for building their navies. I must
own, however, that I found that complaint perfectly groundless,
the three counties of _Kent_, _Sussex_, and _Hampshire_ (all
which lye contiguous to one another), being one inexhaustible
storehouse of timber, never to be destroyed, but by a general
conflagration, and able, at this time, to supply timber to
rebuild all the royal navies in Europe, if they were all to be
destroyed, and set about the building them together.
"I left _Tunbridge_ ... and came to _Lewes_, through the
deepest, dirtiest, but many ways the richest and most profitable
country in all that part of England. {88}
"The timber I saw here was prodigious, as well in quantity as in
bigness, and seem'd in some places to be suffered to grow only
because it was so far off of any navigation, that it was not
worth cutting down and carrying away; in dry summers, indeed a
great deal is carried away to Maidstone and other parts on the
Medway; and sometimes I have seen one tree on a carriage, which
they call here a _tug_, drawn by two-and-twenty oxen, and even
then this carried so little a way, and then thrown down and left
for other _tugs_ to take up and carry on, that sometimes it is
two or three years before it gets to Chatham; for if once the
rains come in it stirs no more that year, and sometimes a whole
summer is not dry enough to make the roads passable. Here I had
a sight which, indeed, I never saw in any other part of England,
namely, that going to church at a country village, not far from
_Lewes_, I saw an ancient lady, and a lady of very good quality,
I assure you, drawn to church in her coach with six oxen; nor
was it done in frolic or humour, but mere necessity, the way
being so stiff and deep that no horses could go in it."--_A Tour
through Great Britain by a Gentleman_. London, 1724. Vol. i. p.
54. Letter II.