Hidden Nature

As part of the Heritage Open Days week featuring ‘Hidden Nature’, we have looked at how the inhabitants of an isolated parish made use of their limited natural resources for almost everything they needed to settle and farm the area.

We are aware that people used to be very self-sufficient. Food was grown locally. Clothes were made from wool or linen prepared, spun, woven and made up in the home, or from leather produced by the local tanner. Motive power was human muscle, or that of oxen and horses bred on the farm, using harness made of heavy leather which was tanned locally and cut and stitched by the local harness-maker.

But we rarely stop to realise that very much more depended on local materials. People used what was available; they had to. Unless something could be bought on a rare visit to a market in Dorking, or carried to Newdigate on a pedlar’s back, it had to be made here from what was available. The houses which they lived in, the ploughs and harrows which worked the field, the knives they used to cut their food were all made in the parish from materials found within in the parish or nearby. This is the hidden nature which we examine here.

Introduction

From the time the parish was first settled, soon after the Norman Conquest, the inhabitants had to be largely self-sufficient.

The soil is heavy, sticky Weald Clay, and the earth tracks became virtually impassable in winter. Dorking was two hours’ walk away, so visits to its market were made rarely, and only in summer. Pedlars doubtless visited occasionally when the tracks were passable, bringing small items which could be carried on a man’s back, like the housewife’s expensive but vital needles. But most things used in the parish had to originate there, or close by: wood, stone, clay, iron and lime.

Newdigate had always had extensive woodlands, and there is evidence that these were managed from long before the parish was permanently settled, providing timber and wood to manors on the greensand and North Downs. After settlement, every farm had some woodland, which provided much of its needs.

Iron was found as nodules in the clay. There was a major ironworks at Ewood in the sixteenth century. We do not know whether iron was made here before that or imported from bloomeries elsewhere in the Weald.

There is very little stone in the parish, but thin beds of limestone and sandstone are found in the clay, as well as the iron-rich nodules. Stone was valuable material which was collected and later dug for, so there is now little remaining on the surface.

Lime is in short supply in Newdigate. Early farmers discovered that the very heavy clay was easier to work and grew better crops in certain fields where a bed of ‘marl’, a soft lime-rich sandstone, was present, and this was dug and spread on other fields. When it ran short, chalk was carted from the North Downs and burnt to quicklime, which was used to fertilise the fields and limewash the interior walls of houses.

The clay itself was made use of. ‘Daub’, which is clay mixed with a binding material, was used to plaster the wattle panels which formed the walls of houses, probably from very early times. It could also be burnt to make bricks and tiles, and crude pottery items may have been made at home.

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A medieval house was built from local materials

For most of history, ordinary houses were built from whatever natural materials were available.

Newdigate parish is situated in the Low Weald, with several hundred feet of Weald Clay beneath it. It is difficult land to farm, but oak trees grow well, and oak timber, clay, and other natural materials were used to build houses.

Although the Romans built Italian-style buildings of brick and tile, their technology went out of use for a long time after they left Britain. The Anglo-Saxons were experts with timber, and this remained the dominant house-building material for centuries.

In the Low Weald timber was plentiful and used to make the frames of buildings. Anglo-Saxon homes were built with the posts sunk into the ground, but the bottom of the posts slowly rotted and the house had to be rebuilt every generation or so.

In early medieval times houses began to be built with the timber frame set on a low stone plinth. This kept the frame off the ground and dry, and provided the roof was maintained, they could last for centuries. Part of Greens Farm dates from about 1309, and Newdigate has many farmhouses built in the 1500s. The church tower, which is built entirely of timber, dates from 1525.

Stone for the plinth

The Weald Clay contains thin beds of stone. One is the Paludina limestone, which makes good paving stone; it outcrops in Charlwood but is too deep in the clay to be accessible in Newdigate parish. But there are also thinner beds of limestone and sandstone which lie at a low angle and outcrop at the surface in places.

Many of the early farmers found exposed stone in some of the fields they cleared, and probably moved it to the sides of their little fields to avoid damaging the plough’s iron tip. So when one of them decided to build a house in the modern way with a ground frame instead of earthfast posts, he collected the stone and built it into a plinth the exact size of his new house, ready to set the ground frame on it.

In about 1100, much of the exposed stone was carted to the church. Every farmer collected what stone he had and brought it to add to the growing pile, and when enough had been collected it was used to replace the first timber chapel with a fine stone church, the only stone building in the parish. The walls of the oldest parts are made from small, rubbly stone of many kinds, from all over the parish and a little way beyond.

Timber for a house frame

Most timber trees were grown in coppice woodland, which was carefully managed.

Trees growing in the open had plenty of light and space, so they only grew short trunks before branching into wide crowns. Such a tree might be ideal for a shipwright, who could cut a big curved timber which followed the grain of the wood up the trunk and out along a branch. But housewrights needed long straight timbers, and a short trunk yielded only short lengths of timber.

Trees which grew tall before they produced large branches also yielded timber which was easier to work. A branch leaves a ‘knot’ in the wood around which the grain circles, making the wood difficult to cut and shape. The type of woodland known as ‘coppice with standards’ was managed specifically to produce such trees, and was very widespread in the low weald.

A ‘standard’ to the left growing amongst coppiced hazel

Coppiced hazel grows rapidly to fifteen or twenty feet high, when it is cut to the ground and regrows. So oak trees grown among coppice stools are drawn upwards towards the light and grow long straight trunks. They only branch into a crown when they are above the hazel, so they yield straight timbers fifteen to twenty feet long and without large knots.

Oak wood is soft and easy to work when it is newly felled and ‘green’. But it becomes extremely hard as it seasons, so it was felled as required. When a new house was planned, the master carpenter would find a landowner who wanted to sell some timber trees and select suitable ones. He would then have them felled and the bark stripped off. Oak bark is full of tannin, and it was sold to the local tanner for making hides into leather. The trunk was then converted into timbers, which were carted to the carpenter’s yard, and he spent the next few months shaping them and cutting the joints. Typically the trees were felled in winter and the house erected next summer.

The carpenter did not choose the biggest trees. Instead he chose trees whose trunks could be shaped into the timbers he wanted with the minimum of effort. The majority of trees cut for house-building were around fifty years old.

Sawing was hard work, and saws were made from iron which rapidly became blunt, so they were used as little as possible. A tree selected for part of a house frame was felled and the branches removed with axes. The trunk was then sawn or hewn to the right length, and roughly squared off with side-axes before being taken to the carpenter’s yard, where he cut the necessary joints. Smaller studs, rails and joists might be cut from smaller trees, or one trunk could be split along the grain using wedges to produce two, four or eight timbers.

The frame of the house

Bayleaf at the Weald and Downland Living Museum

Timber was strong enough to build a large house with a high hall for general use, and later a two-storey private wing for the owners.

A house frame was constructed as a series of open cubes called ‘bays’, typically twelve to fifteen feet square. Each bay corresponded to a room in a modern house, although two or more were usually combined into a general-purpose ‘open hall’. So a modest house with a two-bay open hall and a parlour for the owner would have a ground frame three bays long and one bay wide. Horizontal timbers at the top and bottom of the walls connected posts at the corners of the bay.

The size of a bay was dictated by the length of readily-available timber. But longitudinal timbers could be jointed together, so a house could be of as many bays as the owner could afford, or it could be enlarged later by adding additional bays to the original range, or a wing of one or more bays. Newdigate Place was a substantial manor house which was enlarged over several centuries, and a surviving plan suggests that at its maximum extent it had four connected ranges around a courtyard with wings extending it to a total of twenty or more bays.

As each part of a house frame was completed, the carpenter assembled it flat on the ground in his yard to make sure that everything fitted correctly. Each joint was then marked by inscribing a number into the wood of both timbers to ensure that the correct timbers would be fitted together when it was assembled on site. So a set of rafters for one side of a roof would be numbered successively I, II, III, IIII, V, VI and so on, in Roman numerals which were easy to cut with a chisel, and the same number scribed into the wall plate timber which they were jointed into; the opposing rafters and wall plate had the same numbers but with an extra mark, with rafter I jointed into rafter I’ at the ridge.

It used to be thought that each side of a building was assembled on the ground and then ‘reared’ into position and supported by props set into notches in the posts until assembly was complete, but this is now known to be incorrect. Such props were only used if major repairs became necessary. Then the whole frame was levered slightly upwards and supported while rotten parts of the ground frame were removed and new timbers inserted, then it was carefully lowered back down.

Instead the frame was built in position, one timber at a time. First the ground frame was assembled on the plinth; then the post bases were set in their mortices. Smaller midposts and studs which formed the panels of the walls were set in position, together with the frames of doors; then horizontal midrails

secured their tops. More studs were set into each rail to form the upper part of the walls with the framing and mullions of windows before the wall plates and tie beams which formed the tops of the walls were positioned between the tops of the posts, tying it into a solid structure. Finally the roof timbers were assembled.

Once all the timbers involved in each joint were in their final positions, it was pegged with one or more ‘tree nails’, which were big wooden pegs driven into pre-drilled holes. Matching holes on two halves of a joint were slightly offset so that the peg pulled the joint very tightly together.

Because the timbers were used ‘green’, the finished frame shrank slightly across the width of each timber as they seasoned. This often created open cracks, but they were structurally irrelevant; what was important was that the shrinkage further tightened all the joints, making the frame rigid and very strong.

Walls

The frame had big spaces between the timbers, which were filled with wattle-and-daub to create the walls.

Wattle was made from flexible hazel rods or thin laths closely woven between upright staves. These were set into holes in the timbers above and below the panel, holding it firmly in place. Wattle produced a reasonable wall, but the inevitable gaps between the woven rods and at the ends of the panels made it very draughty. So it was covered with a thick layer of daub.

Daub was clay mixed with a binding material such as straw or hair, and plastered onto both sides of a wattle panel. Tiny cottages often used clay mixed with manure taken from the surface of the road. Houses required much larger quantities, so the clay was dug close to the house. The resulting hole filled with water, creating a pond which served as a convenient water supply.

If properly applied, daub stuck to the wattle panels in a windproof and weather-resistant layer resembling thick plaster. It was usually limewashed on the inside, both to make rooms lighter and because the limewash discouraged insect infestations. Wattle-and-daub will last for centuries provided that it is undamaged and kept dry.

Once chimneys came into general use in the mid-sixteenth century, surplus bricks were sometimes available. These could be used to replace a wattle panel with a brick one. The panels at ground level were replaced first because they had more rat-holes, and because bricks were much heavier than

wattle-and-daub, so a brick panel put a lot of strain on the frame if it was not supported by the stone plinth or by a brick panel below it. Panels were replaced at different times and the bricklayer would make the best use of the bricks he had, sometimes forming decorative patterns, so that the panels of a wall may vary considerably. Wirmwood on Village Street shows excellent example of this type of infill.

Wirmwood – showing different types of infill

Windows

Windows were simply spaces between timbers which were left without an infill to allow light into the house. The word ‘window’ originated from an Old Norse word meaning ‘wind eye’.

A large window could allow unauthorised entry, so it was normal to divide up the space with mullions. These were vertical timbers set into sockets in the timbers above and below the window. Many were simple triangular or diamond shapes, but they could be planed into elegant curves.

A window was very draughty, and various ways were found to close it. Simple wooden shutters ran in grooves and were raised vertically or slid horizontally across the window at night, or during the day on the windward side of the house. Hinged shutters were less common because they required expensive ironwork for hinges and latches.

A window could also be closed by a translucent membrane. A sheet of waxed parchment or thin vellum kept out the wind and cold while allowing some light in. Glass came into general use much later, as it was a complex technology and very expensive. Reffolds, on Parkgate Road, which was built to a high specification in 1609, had glass in the downstairs windows only.

Reffolds had glass in the downstairs windows only

Chimneys

The local clay was ideal for brick-making, and the first local use of bricks was to build chimneys.

Chimneys were in use in castles from very early in history, but they were slow to move down the social scale. Until about 1540 houses in the low weald had the fire in the middle of the hall. Then it was moved to one side of the hall and the smoke channelled up through a narrow smoke bay, or further contained by a chimney.

A cheap, simple version of a chimney was the smoke hood, which was a chimney constructed from timber and wattle-and-daub. The daub lined the flue and prevented it from catching fire, but it remained relatively flimsy and more vulnerable than a brick chimney.

A brick chimney could be inserted into an existing house to upgrade it, or built as an integral part of a new house. (See picture of Wirmwood) In a small house the chimney was usually set externally against a side or end wall, where it did not interfere with the frame or take up space internally. A hole through the wall gave access to the hearth. In larger houses the chimney could be placed between two bays with a fireplace in both rooms.

Bricks were heavy and difficult to transport, so they were made on-site when required by specialist brickmakers.

Roofs

A good roof was essential to any house. Tiles eventually became common, but until then roofs were of thatch, shingles or stone.

Thatch was the earliest and simplest roofing material, made from materials which were readily to hand. As late as the early twentieth century every farm had someone who could do a basic thatching job, though specialist thatchers would do a much better one. The base layer was often something like heather, tied to the laths with flexible honeysuckle stems. Onto this was laid a thick layer of straw, held in place by horizontal spars and twisted hazel ‘hairpins’.

Thatch could easily be patched, and was rarely entirely replaced. When the surface became worn a new layer was added on top, so thatched roofs became very thick and wonderfully insulating. The

main problem was the risk of fire. Farm buildings continued to be thatched until the nineteenth or early twentieth century.

Shingles were wooden tiles split from oak logs. A very large tree was felled and a foot-length log cut. This was cleaved along the grain into eight wedges, and the outer sapwood and the point in the centre removed. The resulting block was split in the centre into two smaller ones, and these in turn split, until dozen or more rough shingles about a centimetre thick were produced. They were finished with a drawknife, and held in place on the roof with wooden pegs hooked behind the laths or driven into holes through them.

Shingles took a lot of work to produce, so they were more expensive than thatch and formed an up-market roof covering. St. Peter’s Church still has a shingled spire, and it is likely that its roof was shingled for much of its earlier life.

Re-Shingling of St. Peter’s Church spire

Horsham stone slabs were used for roofs from the fifteenth or sixteenth century. This was a limestone which outcrops in an arc around Horsham and could be split into thin slabs of varying sizes. It was very heavy and was rarely used more than a day’s journey away from the quarry, but it formed a very long-lasting roof. The weight also meant that it needed a much stronger and more expensive house frame. Surviving timber-framed houses with Horsham stone roofs were generally the biggest and best houses built in the parish.

Farm Buildings

The frame of a farm building was constructed in the same way as a house frame. A barn would have several high bays, a cart shed two or three lower ones, and a hovel, which was an open-fronted animal shelter, was usually a single bay.

The primary difference was that the walls were usually weatherboarded instead of having panels infilled with wattle and daub. Weatherboards were set horizontally on the outside of the timber frame, with the bottom of each board overlapping the top of the one below so that water was shed. Vertical planks could be set on the inside of the frame if it was used by stock which might kick out the boards.

Farm buildings were generally thatched. Some later had the thatch replaced by tiles, but many remained thatched until corrugated iron became available in the early twentieth century.

The Six Bells Barn in Village Street prior to renovation

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Brickmaking

The primary local use for clay was in brick-making, and the first local use of bricks was to build chimneys. Bricks were heavy and difficult to transport by cart, so they were made on-site when required by specialist brickmakers.

First the brickmaker, or labourers under his directions, would remove the topsoil and dig a suitable quantity of clay, leaving a deep hole in the ground close to the house. The clay was spread on the surface and left for a few months while rain washed the salts out. It also filled the hole with water, creating a deeper and better water supply for the farmstead.

Once the clay was weathered, the brickmaker worked it to the right consistency and shaped it into bricks, which were left to dry. Then he stacked them carefully on a bed of wood and covered them with clay, forming a clamp, which he lit and tended. Once it had burnt out and cooled, he could remove the bricks and build the chimney. The smoke from the wood reacted with the clay to give exposed parts of the bricks a distinctive silvery-grey colour, and in later brick-built houses these were often used decoratively.

Clamp-burning was an inconsistent process. Some bricks were always over-burnt and distorted, and others under-burnt and too soft for use. So the brickmaker ensured that he had sufficient sound bricks for the job by making more than he needed. Overburnt bricks were used in house plinths or garden paths, or for firming up gateways. Underburnt bricks could be used indoors, often replacing earth

floors with brick ones. And surplus sound bricks would replace a damaged wattle-and-daub panel in someone’s house.

Brickworks

Much later brickmaking became an industry, with bricks being made in large quantities and transported to where they were needed. However they were not carted far until motor lorries became common, so small local brickworks were very common in areas with suitable clay.

The present Ibstock brickworks between Beare Green and Newdigate may have been started in the late eighteenth century, after the opening of the turnpike road at Beare Green. The turnpike was much better surfaced and maintained than the local roads, so although tolls were charged, it made it possible to transport bricks for a few miles. A fixed site and larger sales might make it worthwhile for the brickmaker to build a kiln, which would give more consistent results than a clamp, and perhaps reduce the price of his bricks. Sturtwood Farm was rebuilt in brick in about 1771.

However the demand must still have been intermittent. When the Duke of Norfolk decided to build a fine new house near Henfold Lane in 1808 the brickworks had to be repaired and labourers employed before any bricks could be made. The Duke died before his house was completed, and his son had it demolished and its materials used to repair Arundel castle.

Newdigate Brickworks

In about 1927 a local man called Fred Corroyer wanted to give employment to ex-servicemen, and started a brickworks on land called New Barns, next to Hogspudding Lane. Most brickworks at this time were mechanising, and it must have been one of the last brickworks set up to make bricks by hand. Initially experienced local brickmakers were employed, together with local men to dig the clay and do other labouring jobs.

It quickly became a thriving business, and two generations of local lads started their working lives in the brickyard. For some years the brickworks also made paving slabs and edgings, and a variety of terracotta items, including garden tubs and vases, bird baths, and ornaments such as squirrels, owls and tortoises.

The clay was dug from what is now the shallow southern lake in the Brickworks Nature Reserve. The topsoil was removed and made into a great pile, which later became a badger set; the badgers were evicted and the pile removed when The Mulberries was built. As the diggings enlarged, narrow-gauge railway lines were installed and the clay was moved in tipping trucks pulled by a small engine.

The dug clay was spread out and left to weather. Then it was crushed and spread in long soaks, where water was poured over it and left to moisten the clay. When it reached a suitable consistency a finely powdered coke called ‘breeze’ was spread over it, or sand if red bricks were required. The clay was shovelled into a steam-driven pug mill, which acted like a giant mincer and mixed the clay to a homogenous consistency.

The brickmaker used a mould called a wort, with a raised ‘frog’ in the base with an N for Newdigate on it. He dusted the mould with sand to stop the clay sticking, cut a lump of prepared clay approximately the size of a brick and placed it in the mould without trapping pockets of air, then pulled a wire called a cockle across it to remove surplus clay. He smoothed the top surface of the brick, and turned it out onto a small board. The ‘green’ (unfired) bricks were laid out to dry for two or three weeks under slatted boards which kept out the weather.

A cockle A mould and ‘frog’

Firing was done in clamps of about 25,000 bricks, which were regarded as being rather small. The base was of overburnt bricks from previous firings, on which was laid on a bed of coke to serve as fuel. The green bricks were then set in place individually, leaning very slightly inwards so that the clamp was stable. The gaps between them were crucial, as they needed to allow just enough draught but not too much. An outer casing of bricks sealed with wet clay covered the clamp and largely excluded the air, so that burning took place in a reducing atmosphere.

Once the clamp was lit, it took several days to heat up to the required temperature of about 1,200oC, and much longer before burning was completed. Movable screens were placed on the windward side if the clamp threatened to become too hot, as bricks could warp or even fuse into a solid mass. Once burning was completed the clamp had to cool before it could be dismantled and the bricks sorted and graded. Meanwhile the next clamp was being built.

Newly moulded bricks at the Newdigate brick works

Impurities in the clay resulted in the colour varying through shades of red, blue and purple, usually darkened by the burning of the crushed coke mixed into the clay. These bricks can be seen in many interwar houses in Newdigate.

Newdigate brickworks, like the majority of others, was closed when WW2 started as a consequence of the blackout regulations. The clamps glowed brightly as they burnt and could have been used as navigation markers by enemy aircraft. The same applied to works which burnt in open-topped kilns, so only the minority which used closed kilns could continue brickmaking during the war, resulting in a huge national shortage of bricks during the war and for some years after.

After the war the business was sold and became partially mechanised, though hand-made brickmaking continued. The original diggings had flooded, and clay was dug from what is now the main lake. The works finally closed in 1972.

Bricks stacked to dry at the Newdigate brick works

Tiles

Handmade clay tiles were probably used locally from about the eighteenth century. They were cheaper than Horsham stone slabs and needed a less robust roof structure, and although more expensive than thatch they lasted longer without major repairs. This made them an intermediate-quality roof covering which was used on smaller houses, the better cottages, and the more important farm buildings.

We have no evidence for tile-making in Newdigate, and do not know where they were made. It must have been within a few miles, because the cost of more than a day’s carting would have been prohibitive. Hand-made tiles with their characteristic slightly arched shape remain common on many older buildings.

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Timber and Wood

Wood Products

As well as house frames, huge variety of everyday household and farming items could be made from wood.

The farmers themselves must have been skilled at making many items, but there was also at least one village carpenter, probably from the earliest settlement of the parish, who could make anything from a ‘joined’ (jointed) bed to a coffin.

The majority of woodland was managed as ‘coppice with standards’ to produce large quantities of coppice wood as well as timber trees. All farms had some woodland, either in blocks or in belts called ‘shaws’ at the edges of fields. There were also extensive woodlands, of which Ewood in the north of the parish was the largest. Anything which is now called a copse, like Hammonds Copse or Reffolds Copse, was formerly coppiced woodland.

Coppicing

It must have been discovered in very early times, long before the low weald was permanently settled, that many species of trees would regrow if they were cut down while relatively young, with several new stems replacing each one that had been removed. This is the basis of coppicing.

Hazel was the most frequent coppice species, but many others were also used and gave wood for different purposes.

Hazel grows long, straight, flexible rods which were used for wattle, hurdles, baskets, thatching rods, and much else. Ash is very resilient and was in demand for tool handles and the felloes (outer part) of

wheels. Hornbeam made the hottest charcoal, and was used to make ox yokes, a vital item when oxen were the main source of power for drawing ploughs and carts. Sweet chestnut could be cleaved into long-lasting fence pales. Elm had many uses, including the nave (centre) of wheels, floorboards and coffins. It was very resistant to rot, so it was also valued to make buckets, gutters and water pipes. Oak was sometimes coppiced, one use being for the spokes of wheels.

An alternative to coppicing was pollarding, which was used in ‘wood pasture’ where grazing animals would damage the new growth. Trees were cut at a height of five or six feet above the ground where the regrowth was out of reach, eventually forming a huge trunk with a head of branches which could be cut every few years. Many of the oldest surviving trees in the country were pollarded for most of their lives.

Coppice woodland was carefully managed and cut on a regular rotation in order to supply the raw material required.

Hazel was typically cut at intervals of seven years, though for other species the intervals could be longer, sometimes as much as twenty-five for hornbeam. Woodland was usually divided into the same number of ‘coupes’ as the cutting interval, or a multiple of it, so that one or more coupes were cut each year.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, auctions were held in the autumn, when the owners of woodland sold the right to cut specified coupes. A woodman would buy one and spend the winter cutting the coppice wood according to strict rules, which included carefully preserving young timber trees and removing ivy and brambles. The coppice was cut close to the ground, and sorted into different species and sizes for different purposes.

Typical products would be cordwood for charcoal, huge numbers of household and kiln faggots for fuel, hurdle stakes and rods, thatching rods, clothes poles, bean poles and pea sticks, the raw materials for barrel hoops and the handles of a great variety of tools, and much more.

During the summer the woodman might work as a charcoal burner, or make items such as hay rakes, trug baskets or hurdles. The rest of the coppice wood he would sell to other people.

Joe Edwards – rake and trug maker who lived on the road to Beare Green

In 1791 the Duke of Norfolk had a detailed survey done of his newly purchased Ewood estates. It included the following details:

Coppice woods in Newdigate were mostly cut after nine to twelve years’ growth, and the wood was worth from £5 to £9 per acre, though less if there was mature timber, which ‘very much hurts the growth of Underwoods’. The prices quoted assume that the woodmen were employed by the duke.

Kiln faggots, used for burning bricks and lime, were cut from the tops of the branches. They cost 2s. 6d. per hundred to make and stack into piles of five hundred, and sold for about 11s. per hundred, profit 8s. 6d. per hundred.

House faggots, used for cooking, baking etc., were cut from the bottom of the branches. They cost 2s. 6d. per hundred to make and stack into piles of a hundred, and sold for 17s. per hundred, profit 14s. 6d. per hundred.

Stack wood, used for ‘cooking etc.’, was cut from the thickest part of the wood to 3ft. 6ins. long, and made into stacks 12ft. long and 3ft. 6ins. high. It cost about 2s. per stack to produce, and sold for 17s. per stack, profit 15s. per stack.

Little coppice material was sold outside the parish, but an exception was barrel hoops, for which there was a huge demand. Wooden hoops were used on barrels for dry goods and iron hoops for liquids; barrels were sent out ‘flat-packed’ and assembled where required. Barrels, and so hoops, were made in ten different sizes, and the hoops were sold by the load, which was thirty bundles. The largest were Middling Hoops, Long Pipe and Short Pipe, which had sixty hoops to a bundle; Hogshead had ninety; Barrel and Kilderkin had 120; Firkin 180; Long Pink and Short Pink 240; and Bottle had 360 hoops to a bundle.

They were profitable items. Bottle hoops cost £1 6s. 3d. per load to make and cost 6s. in carriage to Thames Ditton, but sold there for £2 5s., making a profit of 12s. 9d. per load. At the other end of the scale, middling hoops cost £1 12s. 6d. per load to make, carriage was 12s. and the load sold at £4 10s., giving a profit of £2 5s. 6d.

The curate Thomas Duncomb, writing in 1794, stated that an acre of the very best ten-year-old coppice would produce eight loads of hoops, four of them middlings and four long and short, 200 house faggots, and 500 spray faggots. He quoted costs of £13 14s. for labour and £7 10s. for parish taxes and rent, and an overall profit of £16 every ten years.

Charcoal

Burning wood as fuel required a hearth. This could be an open hearth in the middle of a hall, or set against a wall in a smoke bay or with a chimney. But without somewhere for the smoke to go, a fire was impractical.

The alternative was charcoal, which could be burnt in a brazier and produced no smoke. So it was much valued for use in small rooms without hearths, particularly in towns, although it needed careful ventilation because it produced carbon monoxide, which is undetectable but can easily be fatal.

Charcoal was much lighter than wood to transport, and the demand for charcoal in towns meant that it could be exported from the parish and sold in Dorking or elsewhere.

Wood for charcoal was ‘cordwood’ several inches in diameter and cut into uniform lengths. These were stacked in a ‘cord’, traditionally of 128 cubic feet, and left to season.

Charcoal burning was a skilled job, done by specialists called colliers, who lived on-site during the charcoal-burning season in basic shelters constructed from branches and litter. Charcoal clamps were built on level platforms which were used by many generations of charcoal burners. To minimise the distance that the wood had to be moved, there was probably a site in each coupe of woodland or perhaps where several coupes met.

The lengths of timber were carefully set near-vertically around a group of central posts, as close together as possible so as to exclude most of the air. The finished kiln formed a dome six feet or more in diameter and nearly as high.

Charcoal is made by burning with a minimum of air, so the stack was then covered with a layer of damp vegetation and sealed with turf or earth, leaving only a small number of openings at the base which could be closed as necessary. Then the central posts were withdrawn to leave a chimney, and the stack lit by dropping burning material down it.

Burning took several days, and the clamp had to be very carefully monitored day and night, because the amount of air admitted was crucial. Flues were opened, restricted or closed as necessary to maintain the right temperature of about 300-350oC. Any hole in the covering had to be quickly closed, otherwise the wood would burn to ash instead of charring. Wind could make one side burn too fast, so wattle screens would be set on the windward side.

The state of the charcoal was judged by the colour of the smoke, which changed from yellow to grey and then thin and blue. Once the burn was complete, the flues were closed to exclude all air and the fire went out. The stack was allowed to cool, and then carefully dismantled and the charcoal sorted, ready for sale.

Charcoal burning at the Weald & Downland Living Museum

Timber

‘Wood’ was small-dimension material used for everyday purposes. ‘Timber’ came from some of the same species, but was of larger dimensions and used for building.

Woodland was a valuable asset to its owner. He had an annual income from the sale of the right to cut one or more coppice coupes each year, or from the sale of their products if they were cut by his own woodmen, and he could sell standing timber at intervals when he needed some capital.

Timber trees on farmland belonged to the landowner, not the tenant. The farmer was required to preserve timber trees on his land carefully, and had to ask permission if he needed to fell one in order

to do repairs to his house or barn. Later leases specify that he must preserve not only mature trees but young ‘standers’ and ‘tellers’.

Oak was the dominant timber tree grown in Newdigate, and the most used. Ash and elm were also highly valued for their timber.

Timber was sold ‘standing’, and the buyer was responsible for having it felled and removed, and making good any damage. Since oak was always used ‘green’ (unseasoned), a carpenter or shipwright who received an order for a house or ship would then buy standing timber of the quality and size he required, either privately or at auction.

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Lime

Farmers discovered very early in history that fields which had a bed of a soft, limy sandstone known as marl made the clay easier to work and grew better crops. For generations they dug the marl and spread it on other fields, and the names Marl or Marl Pit appear repeatedly in field names.

Lime acts chemically on the clay to reduce its stickiness, and alters the pH of the soil, making it less acidic and better for growing most crops. Although the mechanism was not understood, people realised that adding crushed chalk to the clay improved it. The effect was much greater if the chalk was powdered, and this could be achieved by burning it to quicklime, which fell into a powder when water was added.

Chalk was carted from quarries on the North Downs at Dorking and Betchworth. Parts of Newdigate parish belonged to East Betchworth manor, where a survey in 1633-5 included a statement that both freehold and customary tenants had, anciently and from time out of mind, the right to dig chalk at Betchworth Hill and carry it to their lands on the manor ‘for the gooding Chalkeing dressing and Improveing of the same’.

Initially the chalk was burnt in clamps. Chalk and fuel were piled into a hollow dug against a bank, covered with earth, and set alight. The parts that got hottest were reduced to quicklime, which was spread on the fields and broke down into a powder when it rained.

Kilns appear in wills here from 1670, and by the late seventeenth century virtually every farm in Newdigate parish had its own lime kiln, and ‘lime burner’ was a skilled occupation.

The local kilns did not conform to the normal pattern. A typical lime-kiln elsewhere was an open-topped brick cylinder which narrowed at the top, and was set in a notch cut into a hillside. The slope allowed carts to access the top of the kiln, where it was filled, and it was fuelled and emptied through an arched tunnel at the bottom.

Newdigate is close to the local watershed and has few steep slopes into which a kiln could be set. This is probably why the bottom two feet of the kiln were sunk into the ground and the excavated soil built up against one side to give access to the top. They were usually sited where there was some slope below them, to allow the sunken part to be drained.

The Duke of Norfolk’s surveyor states that a good sized kiln was nine feet deep, and elliptical, measuring about ten feet by eight. The kiln which was excavated some years ago at Parkgate (a plaque identifies the site on the junction of Broad Lane and Partridge Lane) fits this description, although as it has been largely demolished, its height is unknown. A kiln of this size was estimated to hold over 400 cubic feet of chalk to fill, and produced sufficient lime to dress three acres of land. Duncomb stated in 1794 that a three-acre field was dressed with either a kiln of lime or fifty cartloads of dung every fifth year, though the farmer at Aldhurst Farm, just outside the parish boundary, is said

to have used a kiln per acre. Farmers used their own dung when they had it, probably alternating it with lime; the Duke’s surveyor comments that ‘very seldom any Dung can be bought near Ewood, but Lime may be had in any quantity’.

Duncomb’s figures indicate that if half the land was arable a small farm of forty-odd acres would require one or two kilns of lime per year, while larger ones might need six or more. If Aldhurst’s practice was followed they would need three times this amount. It took from five to eight cartloads of chalk to fill a kiln; and this could only be carted when the roads were hard, either with frost or in summer. Burning could only be done in dry weather.

The kiln had a shelf around the inside wall, about a foot wide and high, which the limeburner used to support large blocks of chalk which he stacked igloo-fashion to create a dome with a space below it. The remainder of the kiln was then filled with chalk. Filling a kiln was said to be a day’s work for a man and a boy.

Provided the weather looked settled, a fire was then lit under the chalk dome, and fuel added through the flue tunnel. Initially a relatively gentle fire was made, to allow the chalk to dry out and ‘set’ in place. Then the heat was increased until 900oC was achieved. At this temperature carbon dioxide is driven off from the chalk, leaving calcium oxide, otherwise known as quicklime. The whole process took about 36 hours.

The fuel was kiln faggots or furze. Furze is said to have been grown specifically for lime-burning on the poorest field on the farm, because it lit easily and burnt hot, though it burnt faster than wood. Huge quantities of fuel were needed for one burning, possibly as many as 1200 furze faggots or 700-800 kiln faggots. The Parkgate kiln had a semi-circular area at the front, and stacking the faggots there would have put them close to the flue tunnel, making it as easy as possible to feed the fire. This was fed constantly in such a way as to achieve an even heat in all parts of the kiln.

The limeburner judged the temperature in the kiln and the progress of the burn from the colour and type of smoke produced and the colour of the chalk at the top of the kiln. When he decided that the whole charge was hot enough, he let the fire go out. It was then several days before the lime was cool enough to be removed from the kiln.

Quicklime is extremely corrosive, and unloading the kiln must have been an unpleasant and potentially dangerous job, even wearing heavy leather gauntlets and breeches. It can cause severe burns and blindness, and this is probably why there seems always to have been a pond close to the kiln, so that it could be washed off immediately if necessary. It is also likely that dust affected the lungs of the limeburners.

Quicklime falls into a powder once it is ‘slaked’ with water. The reaction is an extremely vigorous one, which generates a great deal of heat and must be done with extreme care. Probably the lumps of quicklime were carted to the fields and left there to slake in the rain before being ploughed in.

The following sketch shows a typical lime kiln although the proportions are wrong. The flue tunnel to the front would have been four to five feet high externally and the whole kiln about nine feet tall. So the kiln in the picture is too high and the people too small

The Newdigate kilns were free-standing and partly sunken, with soil piled in a bank against one side to give access to the top.

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Iron

Pictures courtesy of the Wealden Iron Research Group

Wood was the predominant material used for buildings and household and farm necessities, and many things which we assume require metal could be done without it. Everything from house frames and furniture to carts, waggons and ploughs was fastened together with wooden pegs. Door latches were of wood, lifted by a knob on one side and by a string fed through a hole in the door on the other; instead of being locked, a door were barred on the inside with a beam set into sockets on the frame. But small amounts of iron were essential for such things as the tips of plough shares, knife blades, axe heads, and tyres for wheels.

Iron was found in many places in the Weald in the form of beds of iron-rich sandstone and as nodules within the clay. The latter occur in Newdigate.

Bloomery

A ‘bloom’ was a mass of wrought iron, and it was produced in the Weald in ‘bloomeries’ from Roman and Anglo-Saxon times until the blast furnace was introduced in the early 1500s. The word ‘bloom’ comes from the Saxon word ‘blome’, meaning ‘lump’.

We do not know when iron was first produced at Newdigate. There may have been a bloomery at Ewood, but if so the evidence was destroyed by the later blast furnace activity and by use of the

distinctive slag on the roads. Iron was certainly produced not far away, and local blacksmiths would have been able to buy bars of wrought iron from which they could manufacture everything needed locally.

A bloomery extracted the iron by a method resembling the clamps in which bricks and charcoal were made. It had a stone hearth on which a mound of prepared ore and charcoal was built up. This was covered with a layer of clay to exclude air, leaving openings for a draught at the base and the top. The charcoal was lit, and bellows were inserted in the bottom opening, the draught raising the temperature enough to allow the iron to separate from the ore. The result was a mass of soft but not liquid iron coated with slag. Once the bloomery had been dismantled it was beaten to separate the iron from the cinder and produce ‘wrought iron’.

Extracting iron in a bloomery required expertise but relatively little capital. A bloomery could be constructed wherever ore was found, and the site abandoned or reused as required.

Blast furnace

After the invention of the blast furnace in the late fifteenth century, liquid iron could be produced in large quantities and cast into cannon, firebacks and fire dogs, and other items. Cast iron was too brittle for blacksmiths’ work, so the majority was cast as ‘pig iron’ which was then converted to wrought iron in a forge.

A blast furnace was an industrial process for large-scale production, and required substantial investment to set up. It was owned by outsiders but employed huge amounts of local labour. There were three essentials: iron ore, water to power the bellows, and charcoal for fuel. All three were found at Ewood, in the north of Newdigate parish. It was not an ideal site, but an ironworks was set up there in about 1551.

The ore was in the form of nodules scattered through the clay, and required considerable labour to dig. Labourers were probably paid piece-rates to dig it, particularly at slack agricultural times in summer. They dug deep pits, extracting the nodules they found and then backfilling the hole with the spoil from the next pit. The ironworks appears to have bought up local farms, which were dug over to extract the ore before the land was reinstated as far as possible and sold again as farmland.

Water was always a problem at Ewood. Newdigate is almost on the watershed of the river Mole, and Ewood has only small seasonal streams. To overcome this, they stored water in a Great Pond behind an earth dam or ‘bay’. The Great Pond at Ewood was drained just after 1800, but the bay can still be seen behind Mill Cottage. The pond occupied about eighty acres in winter, but was only six or seven

feet deep, and a blast furnace required enormous quantities of water to turn the water wheel which powered the bellows. ‘Pen ponds’ were built on the streams and their water released into the Great Pond when its level dropped. The sites of eight pen ponds are known and there were probably many more.

The primary reason why an ironworks was sited at Ewood was probably fuel. Blast furnaces required enormous quantities of charcoal, and coppice woodland takes decades to establish and become productive.

Ewood had several hundred acres of woodland which was probably carefully managed coppice from the time of the Norman Conquest or even before. Old coppice stools are huge and highly productive, so Ewood may have been able to supply sufficient charcoal to fuel the furnace.

Elsewhere in the Weald there was great concern at the quantities of woodland which were felled to make charcoal, and Acts of Parliament were passed prohibiting the felling of timber for this purpose within eighteen miles of London, eight miles of the Thames, or twelve miles of the coast. Ironworks supplied the demand for cannon to protect England from the Spanish, but also greatly depleted the supply of timber for ship-building.

Working a blast furnace required experts who could knew the proportions of ore and charcoal required, and who

could judge the temperature in the furnace and the progress of the melt. So experienced French iron workers were employed to run the furnaces under the control of an ironmaster. French names and the term ‘alien’ appear in parish records from 1552 onwards. Ewood apparently had up to four iron workers, who lived with their families in cottages very close to the working site.

The works must also have employed huge numbers of woodmen, charcoal-burners, and labourers to dig the ore and do the heavy work on the site. A water mill was built downstream of the works before the 1575, and probably ground flour for the bread needed to feed the labourers.

The ore was prepared for smelting by ‘roasting’ it on an open fire. This oxidised the ore, broke it into smaller pieces, dried it (wet ore could explode in a furnace), and made it porous. It was then ready for the blast furnace.

Unlike a bloomery, a blast furnace worked continuously. Layers of ore and charcoal were fed in at the top of the furnace, and the water wheel powered pairs of bellows which blasted in air, heating the charcoal to high temperatures. Molten iron drained down to the bottom and was drawn off into moulds, and cinders were raked out through vents.

‘Pig iron’ was so called because the liquid iron was run down a channel with a set of rectangular troughs set at right angles to it. It resembled piglets suckling from a recumbent sow, and the huge ingot formed in the channel was called a sow while those from the smaller troughs were pigs.

Forge

Cast iron contained carbon from the charcoal, which made it brittle. Before it could be used by a smith to make finished articles it had to be refined in a ‘finery’ forge. At Newdigate it appears that the furnace was replaced at some point by a forge, although the 1575 survey reads as if both furnace and forge were present.

A sow was fed slowly into the finery forge where it melted, reducing the carbon and leaving an irregular mass of carbon-free iron in the bottom of the hearth. This was reheated and hammered repeatedly on the ‘chafery’ hearth to remove impurities and produce a bar of wrought iron.

The iron from a bloomery was hammered by hand to remove impurities. Forging was an industrial process and used water power to drive two sets of massive hammers, so a new culvert was made in the bay to power a second water wheel. There is evidence suggesting that the bay of the Great Pond was raised when the forge was built in order to increase the amount of water available.

The ironworks at Ewood appears to have been active from 1551 until about 1604. The site was then sold to a speculator, who demolished the furnace and forge, relocated the water mill to beside the pond bay where it could use one of the existing waterwheels, and built a new farmhouse and two new sets of farm buildings. He then resold it as two farms with extensive coppice woodland.

Ewood Farmhouse was built on the site of the ironworkers’ cottages, and includes some re-used timbers which may have come from the demolished ironworks buildings

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