Afternoon in Nymans Woods

We went to an extremely packed Nymans Gardens today. I went down on my own on the marked woodland walk that goes down to the lake that you can see in the distance. This lies at the bottom of a deep valley, and the track here has been specially cut a long time ago through the local stone. The stone here is Upper Tunbridge Wells Sandstone which is a good and hard sandstone formed in the Cretaceous Era. The lake in the distance was originally a Hammer Pond created to power a furnace. There is record that the furnace was in existence in 1574. Water power was used to drive a waterwheel, often a very narrow width one that in turn drove a set of cams that operated the bellows to keep the furnace operating. The iron was dug locally as it is in the stone and charcoal from the woods was used as fuel.

The iron industry of the area lasted from at least the Iron Age through to the very beginning of the 19th Century. It died out because it was easier and cheaper to use coke which had been developed in the 18th Century in the Midlands where all the raw materials were more cheaply available.

A walk in these woods here is always enjoyable and there is plenty to see on the various paths that criss-cross the site .