Category: Uncategorized

The following forays have been arranged for January – March 2025:

Saturday 18th January: Follow up visit to Markly Furnace, Rushlake Green.
Meet at the Dunn Village Hall, Rushlake Green (just south of the Horse and Groom PH, TN21 9QE) at 10.30am.

Saturday 22 February (reserve date 1st March): Follow up visit to Frankham Farm, Mark Cross.
Three bloomery site were identified in Sprayfield Wood in February 2024, adding to several sites previously recorded on the farm, none of which has been dated. The object of this foray is to locate the slag heap of one or more of these sites and excavate one or more trenches to recover pottery or charcoal from which an approximate date for the bloomery can be obtained. It is intended that excavation will last one day only.
WIRG Members only (to comply with insurance). If you would like to attend please email the foray leader before 14th February 2025, to be sent further details of directions, times, venue etc.

Saturday 15th March (reserve date 22 March): Sheffield Forest bloomery.
To assess the extent of a previously unrecorded bloomery site and possible other sites in adjacent ghylls. Roman tile has been found in the area. Meeting at 10.30am. Parking at the foray leader’s house is limited to six cars so please contact the the foray leader if you want to attend.

Current Archaeology published a piece about WIRG in its ‘Odd Socs’ section  in its issue of 3 April 2023. You can read it HERE

Following on from Tim Smith’s article in Newsletter 77 on the painting of ironworks by the artist Herri met de Bles that hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Grohmann Museum of the School of Engineering in Milwaukee, USA, has a collection of paintings of people in work situations. The collection includes two paintings by Marten van Valckenborch (1534-1612) which show furnaces and forges probably in the Meuse valley of southern Belgium.
Marten and his brother Lucas produced many paintings of similar scenes with ironworks as either the main subject or merely as features in the landscape.

WIRG’s experimental bloomery at Pippingford and its display at the Fernhurst Furnace Open Weekend were featured in an item on ITV’s local news broadcast by Meridian on 13 October 2022.

WIRG members Tim Smith, Jeremy Hodgkinson, Judie English and Jonathan Prus were interviewed during filming which took place on consecutive weekends in early September. The video sequence and accompanying text can be accessed here.