Metal Industries of Tintern and the Angidy Valley
The Angidy Valley was a hive of industrial activity in the metal trades, particularly wire making from late medieval times through to the end of the 19th Century. Many remains exist to be explored.
The Abbey Tintern Furnace is a scheduled monument where you can explore the ruins of the furnace site which dates back to 1590. The Angiddy Valley would have been chosen as the location for ironworks due to the availability of waterpower, charcoal (from the surrounding woodland) and iron ore.
This was a charcoal blast furnace which pre-dates the later coke furnaces of the Industrial age. A waterwheel was used to power bellows which created the blast into the furnace chamber and increased the heat to burn the charcoal and melt the iron ore.
It is likely that the furnace was rebuilt on a number of occasions, giving rise to a complex sequence of phasing in the visible remains of stonework. One of these changes was the replacement of the earlier bellows with cylinders to power the blast into the furnace. The Angiddy Valley was the first place in Britain to use this method.
The ironworks complex extended to a much wider area than just the fenced site seen today as it would have included most of the adjacent cottage gardens. This furnace ceased production in 1826 when improved methods of manufacture rendered the complex redundant.
A condensed history of the ironworking industry in the Angiddy Valley is portrayed in a sequence of ceramic plaques on the wall bordering the Lower Wireworks site at the Tintern end of the Angiddy Valley.
Read MoreThe Abbey Tintern Furnace is a scheduled monument where you can explore the ruins of the furnace site which dates back to 1590. The Angiddy Valley would have been chosen as the location for ironworks due to the availability of waterpower, charcoal (from the surrounding woodland) and iron ore.
This was a charcoal blast furnace which pre-dates the later coke furnaces of the Industrial age. A waterwheel was used to power bellows which created the blast into the furnace chamber and increased the heat to burn the charcoal and melt the iron ore.
It is likely that the furnace was rebuilt on a number of occasions, giving rise to a complex sequence of phasing in the visible remains of stonework. One of these changes was the replacement of the earlier bellows with cylinders to power the blast into the furnace. The Angiddy Valley was the first place in Britain to use this method.
The ironworks complex extended to a much wider area than just the fenced site seen today as it would have included most of the adjacent cottage gardens. This furnace ceased production in 1826 when improved methods of manufacture rendered the complex redundant.
A condensed history of the ironworking industry in the Angiddy Valley is portrayed in a sequence of ceramic plaques on the wall bordering the Lower Wireworks site at the Tintern end of the Angiddy Valley.
