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Roman Blast Furnace in Lincolnshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Ian C. Hannah
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Extract

Close to the hamlet of Woolsthorpe (the birth place of Sir Isaac Newton), in the parish of Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, on Thursday, 21st January 1932, the miners quarrying ore for the Frodingham Iron & Steel Co. unearthed a remarkably perfect furnace or bloomery of the Roman period. In shape it was box-like, roughly but carefully hand-moulded of grey indurated clay of the local Upper Lias formation; a fragment of an ammonite fossil was found in a crack. The length was nearly 3 ft., the upper or north-west end was about 22 in., and the lower or south-east end about 24 in. in width. The top was practically level and flat, but the bottom dipped, slightly from the northwest end for about 21 in., then very sharply, so that the depth increased from 15 in. at the north-west end to 21 in. at the other. The sides were irregular, about 6 in. thick at most, and in the middle of each was a tuyere hole, some 6 in. in diameter, sharply splayed externally. The ends were open; the north-west one was evidently the charging, and the other the tipping end. The actual bottom was only about half an inch thick of the same clay, but below this were 3 or 4 in. of a different bluish clay and under it some apparently partly burned oolitic limestone brought from near by. The natural soil is the ironstone whose quarrying led to the discovery of the furnace (pl. XLIV, fig. 1).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 1932 , pp. 262 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1932

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References

page 262 note 1 The exact location is no. 2 mine, field no. O. S. 335; measure 96 ft. along south post and rail fence from south-east corner, thence offset square 34 ft.

page 265 note 1 Report on Margidunum Excavations, by Felix Oswald, published by Nottingham Art Museum, p. 28. Dr. Oswald tells me, however, that nothing very like the Colsterworth furnace can have existed at Margidunum, where the pits were on a larger scale. Thomas May (Warrington's Roman Remains, ‘Guardian’ Office, 1904, p. 18) speaks of ‘sow kiln floors, calcining ovens, smelting and crucible or refining furnaces’ at Warrington, but from his description and illustrations they were quite different from the bloomery at Colsterworth.

page 265 note 2 A brief description of the workings at Ridge Hill, near East Grinstead, will be found in Sussex Archaeological Collections, lxix, p. 183, by E. Straker.

page 266 note 1 It has been confidently denied that in smelting iron the Romans used a flux, but Dr. Oswald tells me he found fair evidence to the contrary at Margidunum.

page 266 note 2 This site, that of a small ford town where a side road branched off from the Ermine street to cross the Witham just south of Grantham, in the parish of Little Ponton, was excavated when a pumping station for the Grantham waterworks was made on part of the area. The results were reported in a lecture delivered in Grantham by Mr. Preston on 18th Nov. 1915. It is printed, but copies are rare, and the place is ignored by the Ordnance Survey map of Roman Britain. A capital moulded in the local oolite, and the footings of massive walls, show that the buildings were of some importance. Coins were found ranging from Vespasian to Honorius. The main line of the L.N.E.R. between London and York skirts the site.