Client:- Herefordshire County Council
Project:- Overlooking the Wye Project. Reconstruction cutaway of Abbey Tintern blast furnace in Angidy valley.
The Abbey Tintern Furnace is a scheduled ancient monument with the remains of a furnace works first active in 1590
A furnace was working on this site since 1590 and the blast furnace ceased production in about 1828.
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.
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.
It is noted historically that Angidy was the first site in Britain to use cylinders to power the blast into the furnace as opposed to the bellows used earlier. These may have been installed in the 18th century. The ironworks complex extends to a much wider area than just the scheduled area, including most of the adjacent cottage gardens. Industrial sites like this were located up and down the Angidy valley.
