In our tour of the lake we have noticed that there are remains of old iron works along its margin, now difficult to trace.
In High Furness, the district of which Coniston Lake is the centre, and the most northern part of Lancashire, there are about thirty known sites where iron was smelted in the ancient way with charcoal, producing a _bloom_--the lump of metal made by _blowing_ in the furnace--whence the name _bloomeries_. Of these sites about half are in the valley of Coniston, and eight are actually on the shore of the lake:--
Beck-leven (below Brantwood) East side. Parkamoor Beck (below Fir Island) " Selside Beck (below Peel Island) " Moor-gill (above Sunny-bank) West side. Harrison Coppice (opposite Fir Island) " Knapping-tree (opposite Fir Island) " Springs (opposite Beck-leven) " Waterpark (below Coniston Hall) "
All these have been bloomeries of a somewhat similar kind, and on Peel Island some iron works have been carried on of a rather different type, and perhaps at a different period. Small bloomeries have also been in blast at Tom-gill (the beck coming down from the Monk Coniston Tarns, often called Glen Mary), and at Stable Harvey in Blawith. One is said to be at the limekiln in Yewdale. There were two bloomeries of the later and larger type at Coniston Forge (up stream from the church) and at Low Nibthwaite, and two others further down the Crake, making sixteen in all the valley now known. There are, of course, many beside in the Lake District, as in other parts of the country.
That there were iron works before the Conquest in Furness appears from the place-name of "Ouregrave" in _Domesday_, which must be identical with Orgrave. At this place, early in the thirteenth century, Roger of Orgrave gave Furness Abbey the mine "cum ... aquæ cursu ad illam scil. mineriam lavandum," a grant confirmed by his son Hamo in 1235 (_Coucher Book of Furness_, p. 229). About 1230 Thomas le Fleming gave them iron mines in Elliscales. By 1292 a great part of their income was derived from iron works.
Canon Atkinson, in his introduction to the _Coucher Book of Furness_, c. xviii., reckoned that they must have had some forty hearths to produce the iron they made. When the wood near the mines was exhausted, it became easier to carry the ore to the place where charcoal was burned than to bring the charcoal--so much greater in bulk--to the ore. An acre of forest was not enough to supply charcoal for smelting two tons of metal, and so the woods were gradually devastated over a wider and wider area.