In the late 16th century and early 17th iron mills and forges were started at Lydbrook. A hammerman lived there in 1610 (fn. 8) and a founder in 1612. (fn. 9) Ironworks of Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, may have been used shortly before 1597 by Richard Hanbury for trial making of Osmund iron for the Tintern wireworks. (fn. 10) From 1600 the earl's works, which retained a connexion with the Tintern works and comprised two forges, were operated with furnaces at Bishopswood by George Catchmay. (fn. 11) A forge, later called Lower forge, was built c. 1600 some way above Lower Lydbrook in place of a grist mill and fulling mill on Greathough brook. Standing on the boundary of a detached part of Ruardean with English Bicknor, it was held in succession by Thomas Hackett, George Moore, Richard Tyler, and John Kyrle. The Crown, which claimed it as an encroachment on the Forest waste, (fn. 12) granted the forge to Robert Treswell in 1626 (fn. 13) but Kyrle, who was made a baronet, (fn. 14) remained in possession in 1635. (fn. 15) Ownership of the forge descended with the earl's English Bicknor estate, (fn. 16) which Benedict Hall purchased in 1634. (fn. 17) The lessees of the king's ironworks evidently forced the forge's closure c. 1637 (fn. 18) but it was quickly back in operation with several fineries. Hall remained the owner (fn. 19) but in 1648 Baynham Vaughan of Ruardean granted a lease of part of it to Griffantius Phillips. (fn. 20) It was apparently rebuilt c. 1650. (fn. 21)

A short distance upstream a grist mill, within Ruardean parish, had been converted as an iron mill, later known as Middle forge, by 1619. It was then owned by Alexander Baynham and worked, together with the king's Lydbrook forge and furnace some distance above, by George Moore and his partner. In the early 1620s it was worked by the lessees of the king's ironworks. George Vaughan purchased the forge in 1623 (fn. 22) and held it in 1645, when John Brayne was working it. (fn. 23) Benedict Hall was the owner in 1657. (fn. 24) Downstream of Lower forge, in a detached part of Newland at Lower Lydbrook, a corn mill was used as a nailer's workshop in 1622. Nearby was apparently a forge worked, possibly from 1611, by Thomas Smart, who in 1622 formed a pond for a battery or plating mill he built there. His assistant Richard Tyler took over the works in 1627 and operated them until c. 1637, (fn. 25) when the lessees of the king's ironworks evidently suppressed them. (fn. 26)

Ironmaking resumed in the royal demesne woodland in 1654 when a new furnace at Parkend was in blast. Built by John Wade, the Forest's chief administrator, to supply the Commonwealth with iron for shot and ordnance, it was a little downstream from the site of the king's furnace. To make use of iron discarded in manufacturing shot Wade built a forge downstream at Whitecroft. In addition to providing shot and fittings for the navy Wade supplied iron to shipbuilders on the river Severn, produced pig iron and bar iron, and sent chimney backs and baking plates to Bristol. (fn. 27) Also in the 1650s several experimental ironworks using local ore were constructed in Dean by a partnership apparently including John Birch and John Wildman, a speculator in royalists' and papists' lands. They employed an Italian glassmaker from Bristol and sought the advice of Dud Dudley, the Worcestershire ironmaster, but their efforts were unsuccessful. (fn. 28) At the Restoration supervision of the Parkend and Whitecroft works under the Crown passed to William Carpenter and from 1662 they were operated by Sir John Winter's nominees, Francis Finch of Rushock (Worcs.) and Robert Clayton, a London scrivener, who also worked a furnace at or above Lydbrook. (fn. 29) The works possibly remained in use for a while after Winter's connexion with the Forest ended in 1668 (fn. 30) but, to preserve the woodland, the Crown sold them and a forge at Parkend in 1674 for demolition to Paul Foley, owner of ironworks near the Forest. (fn. 31) Cinders sent to Parkend from English Bicknor under an agreement of 1692 were evidently not resmelted there. (fn. 32)

From: 'Forest of Dean: Industry', A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5: Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, The Forest of Dean (1996), pp. 326-354. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=23267 Date accessed: 07 July 2009.

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Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster & Hereford Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>