In search of a medieval blast furnace

Furnace Cottage
Various trenches were squeezed into the small garden at Furnace Cottage, in Oakamoor, Staffordshire, for this programme. These included one that reopened the test pit originally dug by Rob Chapman for the Time Team Big Dig in 2003. Well over one metre deep, they all needed to be shored up with wooden scaffolding to make them safe.

A prize find was a very sandy layer, which contained medieval slag. It was suggested that this could have been the casting floor of the later medieval bloomery. A later feature containing Elizabethan slag cut through this surface. Documentary records show the existence of an Elizabethan furnace in the vicinity, so there is a possibility that it was constructed over the earlier medieval site.

Landscape maze
Stewart Ainsworth's landscape detective work and Henry Chapman's topographical survey both highlighted a variety of water channels. These were cut into the land to direct water from the nearby streams to the vicinity of Furnace Cottage. The lack of structural evidence of furnace buildings – of either medieval or Elizabethan date – could be because they were actually situated under the cottage.

East Wall Farm
A mile away, outside the Furnace Cottage valley, further work conducted by the Team uncovered an intact medieval bloomery furnace. The industrial site at East Wall Farm is referred to in historical documents, and pottery found during excavation corresponded with the suggested working life of the furnace during the 12th-14th centuries.

Analysis of slag found on the site indicated that the furnace was extremely efficient and may have been operated for a long period, making this site a centre of industrial activity in the medieval period.

Text only