THE HAMMER PONDS OF SUSSEX.
MOTORISTS on their way to Newhaven, Eastbourne, or Hastings, as soon as they are across the border into Sussex, have to climb over a high tract of wild heathland, from which they promise themselves, if they know their road, a run down the southward slope of the Weald for a dozen miles or so at something well above the speed-limit. As they cross the last ridge of Ashdown Forest they have before them and to their left and right an immense view across the county, one of the most beautiful and (in spite of the building of villas which is turning the neighbourhood of Crowborough into another Hindhead) one of the least famous in England. To them, of course, it is not more than one fine view among many seen in passing ; but to us whose home is in the Weald or Forest (except to those of us to whom Earth is so hard a mother that they can have no eyes for her graciousness) it is the river of the water of life. Is there not that long, bare line of Downs for ever against the Southern sky ? and do we not lift up our eyes unto the hills, which are always, yet never, the same P In every change of season, of light or air, they are as variable as opal, now grey, now green, now blue as mountains; before and after rain, and especially when the turf on their rounded forward bastions is caught by the westering sunlight, and ' their hollow combes, invisible in the high light of midday, are thrown into shadow, they advance a friendly and familiar face ; their white chalk-quarries shine out plainly, and from Polegate, where they rise out of the Pevensey Levels and the sea, past the Alfriston, Lewes, and Shoreham gaps, till beyond Chanctonbury Ring they are lost in the haze of evening, they keep no secret from us. In the dim heat of summer, and in winter mists, they recede, far and mysterious, and the line of their tops, like the horizon of a distant sea, appears faintly over the unseen middle distance ; sometimes they disappear altogether, but we know, with the faith of love, that they are there. How far is this homely and familiar affection of ours from the feeling of Gilbert White of Selborne, who must have known the sight of them well, and yet could call them "this horrific range of mountains "! It is true that through a rainy air their average height of some seven or eight hundred feet, standing up sheer as a wall from the water- meadows, gives them an air of mountainous dignity ; but one cannot help thinking that any one, even in the eighteenth century, who could find the Downs " horrific," must have been easily horrified. Not the least part of their claim to our affection is that they hide from as the hideous expanse of Brighton, which has left its snail-trail over all their southern slopes for miles about it ; and it is for this that we forgive them for hiding from us even the smallest glimpse of sea. Sheltered thus from the Channel to the south by the Downs, and from the north winds by the Forest ridge, we live, as it were, in a walled garden; uor, but for needs must, would we live elsewhere and see other sights.
The Forest, no less than the Downs, has its secret. Between the southward-sloping ridges on which stand the villages with their far-seen spires, and down which run the high-roads, lie deep valleys, each with its brook falling from its source among the heather down through woods, to join others, and at last, as Ouse or Cuckmere or Rother, to be dignified by geographers as a "river of Sussex." Small as these brooks are, the stranger who is wise enough to prefer field-paths to high-roads will find that they feed ponds of considerable size, and that these ponds are obviously not natural, but have been formed by throwing a dam across the valley. These he could easily explain by attributing them to their owners' passion for fishing ; and, indeed, some have been recently made, and old ones stocked, for the purpose. He will wonder at their generic name of "hammer ponds," and still more, as he wanders further, to find yet other dame, derelict now and covered with the " frith " or undergrowth of oak and hazel, through which the stream has forced its way, and often about their base and on the paths and cartways near them the ground black with slag and cindere.
These "hammer ponds" are the only remains of the Sussex ironworks which, when the last furnace was blown out at Ash- burnham, on the Kentish border, in 1823, had flourished for not less, and probably much more, than two thousand years. The Romans found them here when they landed, and them- selves worked them ; and though, curiously enough, there is no mention of the industry in Domesday Book, the Weald continued to share with the Forest of Dean the production of English iron. The invention of artillery must have given the works a great impetus, and it is significant that in all later documents relating to them the supply of cannon and shot takes a chief place. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who has deserted the Downs for the Forest, knew this well when he wrote in his " Puck .of Pook's Hill" that story of local ironmakers, who managed to combine the casting of cannon for their King with smuggling them out of the country to the very pirates against whom they were to be used,—an invention very probable, and to this day true to the local character.
Either under the Commonwealth, or soon after the Restoration, it seems that the import-duties on foreign iron were removed, with the result that the native works were soon almost at a standstill. The Dutch Wars gave a temporary relief, but by 1667 the Sussex ironmastera were petitioning the Government to reimpose the duties. Some drafts of these petitions are preserved, and have been printed in that excellent series, the "Sussex Archaeological Collections." The argu- ments used show an extraordinary resemblance to those of modern Tariff Reformers. Unemployment, low standards of living among foreign workmen, and the dangers of war were then, as now, the points most dwelt upon. Their furnaces and forges, they said, had employed over fifty thousand men, moat of whom were now out of work; and the foreigners in the Northern countries of Europe not only had great abundance of " iron mine," but ." especially by the cheapnes of theyr men's labor who work as slaves, nor with that liberty which the meanest of your Majesties subjects enjoy," could " dump " it upon this country. Moreover, all the iron used in the Navy came from Sussex, and if the works were ruined, the foreigner would supply bad iron at a monopoly price in time of peace, and in time of war none at all. Whether or not these arguments prevailed with Charles, the industry certainly survived, and at times prosperously, for the next century and a half. Meanwhile the rapid consumption of timber by the ironworks had for long given anxiety, and again and again alarmists had endeavoured to Put a check on the works, on the ground that the supply of oaks for the Navy was running short. This was probably true to a certain extent, and the petition already quoted forestalls it by explaining that the ironfields, "without doing any damage to timber, are sufficiently stored with underwood preserved for making of coales " charcoal). •
But the decline and fall of Sussex ironmaking was not due to any such reasons of State, nor to foreign competition, but to the discovery of coal, or " sea-coal " as it was then called, side by side with iron. Coal bad first been used for iron- working at Coalbrookdale, in Shropshire, quite early in the seventeenth century, but the English mind is slow, and it was not in common use until well on into the next century.
The Sussex irontnasters tried to adapt themselves to the new conditions. Their waggons, which carried up to London guns, railings such as those of St. Paul's, firebacks, and other motley articles of their manufacture, would return, not empty, but laden with sea-coal. More was brought by sea to New- haven, and then up the Ouse in barges; the locks may be traced as high up the stream as Lindfield, deserted now and ruinous, nor is it likely that the Canal Commission will think them worth restoring. But to get adequate supplies must have been difficult and costly, and so, while the coal-worked Northern iron increased in output, the charcoal-fed works declined, though the Sussex metal is not only of finer quality, but far richer in quantity, than its successful rival. All our ditches (and often our house-pipes !) are coated with the red deposit, and the very soil is coloured with iron. The recent discOvery of coal at Dover looked at first, then, as if. it might prove revolutionary ; but the supply is, it appears, neither rich nor easy to work, so we shall not see our green valleys turned into a treeless Black Country, at least until some great discovery frees the craft of ironmaking from the tyranny of fuel ; and however much it would enhance the value of our land, most of us are on the whole not sorry for it.
The old works certainly did not blacken the countryside as would the modern. Indeed, even when in full working they were probably not much more obtrusive than their remains are_ now. The rare traveller over the Sussex roads (notorious until quite recent times for their heavy mud, ploughed up
by timber-wains and "poached" by cattle), making his way by slow stages to Rye or Lewes, or to one of our old country houses, might see here and there as he went, among woods deeper than to-day, the glow of a blastfurnace, or bear from a forge the recurrent clanging of its hammers. To-day the carts laden with mine and corded frith no longer file along the roads, the great hammer-beam is probably rotten below ground, and the furnace-fires are dead ; but these quiet pools among the woods are still haunted by the ghost of that busy old industrial life.
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