The Early Iron & Steel Industry
There have been dark satanic mills in this area since the human race discovered iron. There is no archaeological evidence of the smelting of iron around Rotherham before the Romans settled into the fort at Templeborough. However given the prevalence of easily dug ore, with charcoal from the surrounding forests, it is likely to have taken place to provide agricultural implements and weapons. The era was not called the Iron Age for nothing. The evidence of smelting in Roman times is scanty but the excavations in 1916/17 found an area outside the walls at the south eastern corner indicate that there was a smithy and tanks which contained water for quenching. Once again evidence from Dark Age Rotherham is lacking but the exploitation of the iron ore deposits must have continued on a small local scale. Ore was dug from shallow pits or greaves (Old English graef) and there are many place names in the area eg. Low Greave, High Greave, Orgreave which indicate this. Some of these might have been coal greaves or both since shallow seams of coal are mixed with the seams of iron ore in places around Rotherham.
Kirkstead Abbey Grange
In Medieval Rotherham the monks at Kirkstead Abbey Grange smelted ore and there were iron working at Thundercliffe. The first documentary evidence dates from 1161 when the Cistercian monks of Kirkstead Abbey in Lincolnshire entered into agreements with the Lords of the Manors of Ecclesfield and Kimberworth to exploit iron ore deposits. They were granted the Hermitage of St John, the lands that had been held by the hermit and a further 30 acres for pasturage. They were given the right to mine ore, and erect building including two furnaces and two forges, to gather deadwood for charcoal also to pasture cattle and horses on the common land at Kimberworth. Various other grants from later landowners confirmed and extended their holdings and after 1218 Matilda de Furnival granted the monks free carriage of lead, iron, timber and leather throughout her lands.
The work was probably done by lay brothers with an overseer from the abbey. The miners and founders were housed in the Monks Smithy Houses now known as Kirkstead Abbey Grange. The ore was dug from surface outcrops or shallow shafts know as bell pits and carried to the surface in baskets. Later deeper shafts and adits supported by timber roofs had to be developed. The ore was smelted in primitive boles, shallow pits in the ground surrounded by stone walls orientated to take advantage of the prevailing winds. Smelting with coal made the iron brittle so the ore was heated with charcoal. This melt left a spongy mass of iron ore mixed with slag and impurities. The bloom was reheated in the bloomery furnace and beaten to produce ductile wrought iron. This was then cut up into workable pieces which were supplied to ironmongers, blacksmiths and cutlery makers by packhorse for reworking as tools or weapons. It seems to have been a very labourious and inefficient system.
Later the furnaces moved to close to the site of the present Thundercliffe Grange to take advantage of the water supply where there is evidence of use in Medieval and Tudor Rotherham. Waterpower was used to drive large bellows to obtain much higher temperatures for the melt and probably to drive the forge hammers. No history of the workings remain but by 1537 when the monasteries were dissolved there was no mention of iron-workings in the abbot's account of possessions for Kirkstead. However the iron ore continued to a be a valuable asset and the right to mine ore was leased.
The Earl of Shrewsbury's Ironworks
Around 1400 the blast furnace was invented in Belgium but does not seem to have arrived in South Yorkshire until the 16th Century. Accounts of the Earl of Shrewsbury record fineries (refineries) at Kimberworth in 1578. This is likely to have been somewhere along the River Don in what is now the Masbrough area in the Manor of Kimberworth. In 1589 the Earl of Shrewsbury was operating two blast furnaces in South Yorkshire one of which was in the Holmes/Kimberworth area using the waters of Holmes Head Goit which left the River Don at Jordan. You can bet your sweet life that his lordship never got his own little lilywhites dirty.
Steel Production
From early times steel was made in small quantities by heating wrought iron with charcoal so that the metal absorbed carbon. The quality and quantity of the steel depended entirely on the skill of the smith.