Rockley Furnace Barnsley Yorkshire - a photo on Flickriver

Built between 1698 and 1704, the furnace formed part of a trade syndicate in Yorkshire centered on the Spencers of Cannon Hall. It operated until 1741 with Charcoal as fuel.

It is thought that the furnace operated again around 1790, using coke fuel, to produce gun casting.

Rockley Furnace made Cast Iron in the eighteenth century, using ores mined in the same valley and charcoal from the surrounding woodlands

This furnace was probably built about 1700, for by 1704 there would appear to have been two furnaces in the valley, the other having been started in 1652, 500 metres to the west.

Documents from the first twenty years of the eighteenth century suggest that both furnaces worked intermittently, but in 1726 only this one appears on an estate map. In that year it was leased to William Cotton and Samuel Shore from the Earl of Stafford. Their rent payments can be found in the Stafford accounts until 1741.

The Furnace site was purchased from the Wentworth Estate back in 1957, but the site has never been developed.

Archaeological excavations took place between 1978 & 1982. These have shown that molten iron was cast from the hearth (now missing) in the base of the furnace, into moulds in a bed of sand to the west. The pigs of iron which were formed would be sent to finery forges such as Wortley Top Forge, to be converted into bar iron. Probably after the time of Cotton and Shore a pit was dug through these pig-beds, and this was lined with stone. In this pit, moulds of clay or loam would be placed, for casting objects such as cylinders, pipes or guns. This change could have taken place about 1790, when the furnace is said to have been re-opened. The archaeological results support this, for the more recent deposits contain coke, which was increasingly used in Yorkshire blast furnaces at this time. The furnace cannot have been used in this way for long, for it is not mentioned in lists of furnaces of the period.

Information from Wortley Top Forge website.
www.topforge.co.uk/

Taken in: United Kingdom / England / Barnsley / Worsbrough (show map)

Taken on: May 13, 2012

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Camera: Nokia N95 8GB, f/2.8, 1/333 sec, 5.6mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nokia N95 8GB
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.003 sec (1/333)
Focal Length:	5.6mm
ISO:	100
Flash:	Auto, Did not fire
Exposure Mode:	Auto
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
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