MEM15352 - Lethbridge's Smelting Furnace (Monument)

Site of Sir Thomas Lethbridges' smelting site. Site excavated but overgrown. Masonry unprotected. [1] In 1839 Sir Thomas Lethbridge, a director of a small south wales ironworks opened an adit which intersected a lode of iron ore on land he owned in Bearland Wood, at circa SS 97433573. He failed to sell the extracted ore and attempted to smelt it on site nearby, which also failed. [2] Following the closure of the mine in 1883 the site was deliberately covered with spoil, which had been partly later removed for use as hardcore. This partially exposed the building thought to be the site of Lethbridges' smelting site, which was excavated by Somerset Industrial Archaeology Society and the Exmoor Mines Research Group in 1995. [3] The excavation revealed insufficient detail to confirm the interpretation of the structure, identified as a rectangular building depicted on the first edition Ordnance Survey map, as Lethbridges' smelting site. The structure which was thought to resemble a smithy or bloomery, rather than a blast furnace. [4] The structure is located at circa SS 97453591. [5] Near the southern tip of the spoil mound at SS 9744 3591 are the remains of a building currently being excavated by the Exmoor Mines Research Group, and believed to be the smelting house built by Thomas Lethbridge in the 1840s. [6-9] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [10]