September 2002
Research and Teaching

Experimental Iron Smelting at Rievaulx

Dr Gerry McDonnell, of Archaeological Sciences, and students from the University have stepped back in time more than 400 years to construct a furnace at Rievaulx Abbey.

The North Yorkshire Moors have a history of ironworking which extends back to the Iron Age. Although modern industry has been studied in detail for Rosedale and the Cleveland area, very little research has been undertaken into the industry's origins.

The western side of the North Yorkshire Moors has several important sites linked to the different periods of English iron-smelting technology, focused around Rievaulx Abbey. The project aimed to investigate the ironworking landscape around Rievaulx Abbey and the changing technology through the pre-monastic, monastic and post-monastic periods and to look at the ironworking landscape in relation to other crafts and industries, such as quarrying, woodland and waterpower.

Gerry and his students built a bloomery shaft furnace before operating it to smelt ore to produce iron and slag. They now intend to monitor the furnace as it decays over time to provide a model for furnaces that are excavated.

Over the last eight years ironworking sites in the Rievaulx and Bilsdale area have been surveyed. Numerous early bloomery sites have been identified, many of these probably date from the medieval period. These bloomeries were small furnaces, cylindrical in shape, built of clay, fuelled by charcoal, used local ore and were blown by hand or foot bellows.

At the Dissolution in 1538 a water-powered 'High Bloomery', a proto-blast furnace, was operating at Laskill Grange, Bilsdale, to the north of the Abbey. In about 1570 the Laskill site was replaced by construction of a blast-furnace at Rievaulx, which operated until about 1670.

Gerry said: "The project offered a unique opportunity to investigate the changes in ironworking, as the focus of the ironworking activity moved southward from Bilsdale to Rievaulx. The later sites do not overlie earlier ones, which happens in many other iron working areas, and this provides opportunities to study the residues from ironworking that are associated with the changing methods of producing iron."

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