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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 The industrial site at East Wall Farm is referred to in historical documents, and pottery found during excavation corresponded with the suggested working life of the furnace during the 12th-14th centuries.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.
Furnace Cottage
Rob Chapman, of Furnace Cottage, Oakamoor, Staffordshire, took part in the Time Team Big Dig in the summer of 2003. The back garden of his cottage was one of the sites specially featured in the live Big Dig programmes because it seemed very likely that remains might be discovered of the Elizabethan blast furnace known to have stood here.
Though the test pit excavation for the Big Dig didn't reveal the location of the blast furnace, it did uncover an iron 'bloom'. This would have been produced by an even earlier method of iron smelting practised for centuries before the more sophisticated Elizabethan blast furnaces were developed. Time Team's excavation in Rob's garden revealed that, before the Elizabethan furnace was built, an earlier medieval furnace – or bloomery – stood on the site.
In an attempt to recreate medieval iron working Time Team called in iron smelting expert Tim Young and blacksmiths Aaron and Toby Peterson.
The blooming process
The blooming process begins with the construction of a furnace. 'We have limited time with Time Team to build an exact replica of a medieval bloomery and prepare it properly,' said Tim Young as he set to his task. 'What we've done is to construct the furnace with fire bricks and then line it with clay.' An original medieval furnace would have been constructed completely out of clay.
The three-day time limit for a Time Team programme also meant that there was not time for the clay to dry out naturally. So, once it had been built, the bloomery was fired to dry it more quickly. While this was being done, constant attention was required to rub wet clay into any cracks that appeared to ensure the furnace was totally airtight.
Bouncy-castle bellows
After firing with wood for the drying process, on day three of the dig charcoal was loaded into the top of the furnace to prepare for the smelting. After constant blowing with bellows (and a bouncy-castle air machine – a 21st-century 'cheat'), the temperature inside the furnace began to rise. 'We should be hitting about 1,400 degrees Celsius when this is running properly,' said Tim.
With the air blasts bringing oxygen to the heart of the furnace, the charcoal was soon glowing white hot. The furnace was then loaded to the top with the first charge of equal amounts of charcoal and iron ore. Additional charges were added as the level dropped. 'All the time the ore is running to the bottom and the iron bloom is settling with slag on the top,' said Tim.
Fingers crossed
Towards the end of the day, after around six hours of firing, the furnace was shut down. Fingers were crossed that it had worked and everybody waited to see if an iron bloom could be lifted from the base of the furnace.
'We're going to have to use an iron bar to break the surface slag to see if our firing has worked,' said Tim. 'We're going to try to lift it from the top using long tongs. If that doesn't work we'll go in from underneath.'
After some apprehension about whether the reconstruction had worked, the chunks of slag were steadily lifted away and a cheer went up as a crusty lump of iron bloom finally emerged from the heat-hazed furnace.
'Well, it worked,' said Tim. 'But I think we could have done a better job given more time. The brick lining of the kiln didn't allow for enough silica to be incorporated into the firing, which you would get with a furnace constructed completely out of clay. I think we've still got a good few kilos of iron though,' he said with a smile.
Drawing his own conclusions
'If it wasn't for the Big Dig, I don't think any of this would have happened,' says Rob Chapman, the owner of Furnace Cottage, whose garden was excavated by Time Team at Oakamoor. 'People in the village have always wondered where the furnace was and this has helped us learn a bit more about it.'
As well as being the owner of Furnace Cottage, Rob is an accomplished artist. The research work that he carried out for the Big Dig enabled him to draw his own reconstruction of the site. As the dig developed, though, he had to rethink his original drawing and come up with a more accurate version.
'From my earlier research I did a reconstruction drawing to illustrate what I thought the furnace would have looked like,' he says. 'However, with the constant digging and all of the new research being done, the general consensus of what would have been here has changed. I've done a second revised illustration which matches the current thinking more closely.'
Completely involved
After registering for the Big Dig, Rob never imagined that his garden would end up at the centre of a full-scale Time Team dig, but he really enjoyed the experience: 'It's been nice to have the Team here. It's also been good because I feel like I've been completely involved with everything that's been going on. With all these experts about they've still been interested in my opinion and we've all worked together to try to work out what happened here.'
As the digging progressed, it seemed for a time that it wasn't going to uncover additional medieval bloom material, the find that bought Time Team here in the first place. 'We knew from the records that a blast furnace was here in 1593 and we've found loads of blast furnace slag dating to around that time, but finding evidence of earlier stuff has been harder,' says Rob.
'When we did the Big Dig, it was a piece of bloomery slag that sent Carenza off the scale with happiness. I was beginning to think that we didn't have any more when specialist Gerry McDonnell identified some under the level of the later blast furnace stuff. This was great, especially as it had 12th-14th-century pottery with it.'
So the dig was a great success for Rob even after being invaded by 50 or so members of the Time Team crew in his cottage garden. 'The whole experience has been really good,' he says with a laugh. 'I just hope the garden recovers.'
Stewart Ainsworth found himself in hot water on this shoot. 'I just can't believe him!' said sound boss Steve Shearn. 'He's dried it out and there's still no spark of life in it.'
While clambering around the landscape in search of clues to its past, Stewart jumped over a ravine and dropped his expensive production communications radio in a river. 'I don't think it works anymore,' said Stewart sheepishly.
One more argument in favour of what John Gater called the 'scientific approach' as he gloated over the discovery of a furnace that had been picked up by geophysics on a site that Stewart had dismissed as uninteresting.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
English medieval industries: Craftsmen, techniques, products edited by John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (Hambledon Press, paperback edition 2001) £19.95
This work is intended as a modern successor to L F Salzman's English Industries in the Middle Ages (1913). The approach to each industry is by material, discussing its acquisition, working and sale as a finished product. Only industries that resulted in the production of consumer goods and where substantial numbers of artefacts survive from the Middle Ages are dealt with (fishing and brewing are therefore omitted); the text is illustrated by pictures of surviving objects and contemporary representations of medieval work.
The Medieval English Economy by Jim Bolton (Everyman, 1988)
'The book on the subject that I recommended to everyone' – Mick Aston, but unfortunately out of print.
The rural settlements of medieval England edited by Mick Aston, David Austin and Christopher Dyer (Blackwell, 1989)
A wide-ranging collection of essays, written by a distinguished team of archaeologists, historians and historical geographers.
A medieval industrial complex and its landscape: the metalworking, watermills and workshops of Bordesley Abbey by Grenville Astill (Council for British Archaeology Research Report 92, 1993)
Professor of archaeology at Reading, Grenville Astill reports on his research project on the reconstruction of a medieval monastic economy, based on documentary research and archaeological fieldwork on the granges and estates of Bordesley Abbey.
Historical Metallurgy (Historical Metallurgy Society, 1 Carlton House Gardens, London SW1 5DB, www.hist-met.org/)
This internationally recognised journal, published annually in two parts, is mailed free to members of the Historical Metallurgy Society. Past issues have included papers on subjects as diverse as Neolithic copper working, early blast furnaces, Tibetan metal sculpture, the replication of Iron-Age smelting, tin and lead smelting, slag composition, oxidation enrichment bands in wrought iron, metallurgical processes, medieval arms and armour, and silver, pewter and copper alloys in domestic ware.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
Time Team Big Dig
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/B/bigdig/
pit_report/index.jsp?pit_id=1847497_01
These are the web pages for the original Time Team Big Dig test pit at Oakamoor.
GeoArch
www.geoarch.demon.co.uk/timyoung.html
GeoArch is the Cardiff-based consultancy of Tim Young, who recreated a medieval blast furnace for Time Team at Oakamoor. The website includes information on various aspects of archaeometallurgy and geoarchaeological research associated with the exploitation of iron. It includes detailed diaries of a programme of experimental iron-making, based at the Museum of Welsh Life, Cardiff, including furnaces of the kind seen on Time Team.
Staffordshire Industrial Archaeology Society:
Blooming with Time Team at Oakamoor
http://www.staffsia.org.uk/timeteam.htm
SIAS chairman Jim Andrews' account of his involvement with the experimental furnace at Oakamoor.
Historical Metallurgy Society
www.hist-met.org
1 Carlton House Gardens
London SW1 5DB
The Historical Metallurgy Society provides a forum for exchange of information and research in historical metallurgy. It aims to gain recognition for the subject from the community at large and to be consulted when issues of preservation and recording arise. Established in 1962, the society covers all aspects of the history of metals and associated materials, production and use, technology and economics; from prehistory to the present. Publishers of Historical Metallurgy – see Further reading.
Ancient Metallurgy Research Group
www.bradford.ac.uk/archsci/depart/resgrp/
amrg/amrginfo.htm
The Ancient Metallurgy Research Group was established in 1992 within the Department of Archaeological Sciences at Bradford University. The AMRG encourages investigations into all areas of ancient and historical metallurgy, including mining, primary metal production, artefact manufacturing, slag and residue studies, cultural aspects of metallurgy and metals, geophysical survey of production sites, and archaeomagnetic dating of high-temperature features.
The website has links to field projects organised by the group, including the North Yorkshire Moors Ironworking Project and:
Experimental Iron Smelting at Rievaulx Abbey
www.bradford.ac.uk/archsci/
depart/resgrp/amrg/Rievaulx02/Rievaulx.htm
Extremely well-illustrated web pages (with slow download time as a result) detailing the construction and operation of a bloomery shaft furnace.