CHAPTER VII 
CUMBERLAND COAL, IRON AND STEEL 
IT is well known that many of the higher qualities 
of iron ore in England and Scotland are exhausted, and 
the same is true of Spain, from which the great bulk of our 
steel-making ores, other than basic, is obtained. __The only 
British ores of the finest quality are those on the North- 
west Coast, and it is commonly believed that these, which 
are almost indispensable to Sheffield steel-makers, are 
approaching an end. It is only since the invention of 
the Bessemer process that the ores of Lancashire and 
Cumberland have been drawn on to a very large extent, 
though iron was made there many centuries ago. There 
are still traces of the Roman and medieval iron-maker in 
these parts. Furness appears to have been a metal- 
lurgical centre of importance in Plantagenet days, for it is 
on record that, when the Scots entered the district in the 
tenth year of Edward II, they seized all the manufactured 
iron they could find and carried it off in preference to other 
plunder. Mines were opened near Egremont early in 
the seventeenth century, at Fizzington in the middle of the 
eighteenth century, and at Cleator Moor before the end of 
that century. The metal was, as in other districts, smelted 
with charcoal. The surplus was exported to North Wales 
and other coast localities to which the carriage by sea was 
cheap and where wood was plentiful, but where no local 
ores were to be found. 
The Cumberland hematite ores are chiefly found in 
pockets and are irregular in distribution. Sometimes they 
appear almost stratified, where they occur amongst the 
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