CHAPTER II.
EARLY ENGLISH IRON MANUFACTURE.
"He that well observes it, and hath known the welds of Sussex, Surry, and Kent', the grand nursery especially of oake and beech, shal find such an alteration, within lesse than 30 yeeres, as may well strike a feare, lest few yeeres more, as pestilent as the former, will leave fewe good trees standing in those welds.

Such a heate issueth out of the many forges and furnaces for the making of iron, and out of the glasse kilnes, as hath devoured many famous woods within the welds,"-- JOHN NORDEN, Surveyors' Dialogue (1607).
Few records exist of the manufacture of iron in England in early times.
After the Romans left the island, the British, or more probably the Teutonic tribes settled along the south coast, continued the smelting and manufacture of the metal after the methods taught them by the colonists.

In the midst of the insecurity, however, engendered by civil war and social changes, the pursuits of industry must necessarily have been considerably interfered with, and the art of iron-forging became neglected.

No notice of iron being made in Sussex occurs in Domesday Book, from which it would appear that the manufacture had in a great measure ceased in that county at the time of the Conquest, though it was continued in the iron-producing districts bordering on Wales.
In many of the Anglo-Saxon graves which have been opened, long iron swords have been found, showing that weapons of that metal were in common use.

But it is probable that iron was still scarce, as ploughs and other agricultural implements continued to be made of wood,--one of the Anglo-Saxon laws enacting that no man should undertake to guide a plough who could not make one; and that the cords with which it was bound should be of twisted willows.