The Management of a Sixteenth-Century Ironworks

Abstract

The change-over from the use of the bloomery to the blast furnace2 in the making of iron in Sussex in the first half of the sixteenth century brought about notable increases in the scale of production and the requirements for capital equipment 3 and raw materials.4 Whereas a late medieval bloomery had usually produced 20 to 30 tons of iron in a year from a simple hearth, it would not be uncommon for a sixteenth-century blast furnace to have an annual production of 200 tons of pig, to be converted at a forge into I30-I50 tons of bar iron. Apart from the increase in the quantities of material to be handled, the added complexity of the indirect process meant greater difficulty in the identification of technical deficiencies. If undetected, these could result in poor yields with effects which could be financially serious over the long periods for which furnaces could be continuously in blast. Similarly, difficulties in obtaining regular supplies of raw materials on a sufficient scale could lead to considerable uncertainty. Such aspects of management in the industry have been apt to be over-shadowed by the actual details of technical change, and are rather less well known than managerial methods in industries where less technical development took place. To approach questions surrounding the early growth and management of the iron industry, quite apart from answering them, requires an interpretation of surviving accounts which is made no simpler by their form. Accounting was regarded rather as a means of preventing or detecting fraud by the clerk of the works than of providing a source of information upon which decisions could be