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A VISIT TO LEWES 175
But later on the introduction of coal for manufacturing purposes removed the furnaces to the northern counties. The decline of the Sussex iron manufacture dates from the production of iron in the northern coalfields. In 1740 there were fifty-nine furnaces in England, and ten of these were in Sussex ; in 1788, there were seventy-seven, but only two in Sussex ; and in 1796, while England possessed 104, Sussex had but one! Many of the great Sussex families owed their prosperity to this now extinct staple. " In the days of Elizabeth, the Ashburnhams, the Pel-hams, the Montagues, the Nevilles, the Sidneys, the Sackvilles, the Dacres, the Stanleys, the Finches, the Gages and even the Percys and the Howards, did not disdain such lucre, but pursued it to the destruction of old ancestral oak and beech, and with all the apparent ardour of Birmingham and Wolverhampton men of these times. We may add after these the Culpepers, the Dykes, the Darrels, the Apsleys, the Coverts, the Merleys, the Shirleys, the Burrells, the Greshams, the Bulldens, the Grativekes, and the Fullers. Concerning the last family, which is mentioned by Kipling in ' Gloriana,' there is a tradition that the first of the house in Sussex gained his fortune by hawking nails about the country on the back of |
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