240
CHARCOAL-BURNING IN ESSEX.
that county, many having been dug up here and there at various
times.
And, as regards London, I am obliged to Mr. H. L. Kerdel, of
the C.O.S. Office, Greenwich, who tells me that many tree-
trunk pipes were unearthed in Bedford Street, Covent Garden,
during the first week in November, 1903. Lastly, Mr. Whitaker
informs me that, according to Dr. Mill, some wooden water-
pipes were exposed in digging a trench along Dorset Street
between Baker Street and Gloucester Place in 1903.
CHARCOAL-BURNING IN ESSEX.
By T. S. DYMOND, F.I.C, County Technical Laboratories, Chelmsford.
[Read March 19th, 1904.]
" At Thundersley, where there is much wood, part of the copse is cut at
eleven or twelve years' growth into lengths of three feet for burning into charcoal.
The burner is paid 20s. per 100 sacks, each of eight pecks ; he does not cover the
heaps with turf or earth, but with rushes, fern, thistles, long grass, weeds, or
stubble which the master finds, but if the burner gets them he has 2s. per hunched
more. He burns two heaps a week the year round, five cords in a heap ; the
master buys the wood at 14s. to 17s. the cord of twelve feet long, three-and-a-
half high, and three broad. A team of five horses in a six-inch wheeled waggon
comes every week from London and takes 200 sacks." General View of the
Agriculture of Essex, by Arthur Young (1807), II., 147.
The details of the process of charcoal-burning in Essex as
described by Arthur Young nearly a century ago remain true
to-day, but the magnitude of the industry has gradually declined
until now, probably, not one-third of the charcoal is produced in
the whole county that was formerly produced at Thundersley
alone. The causes of this decline are various. The disappear-
ance of hop-growing and drying as an Essex industry and of
the cutlery manufacture at Thaxted, for both of which charcoal
was used, and the replacement of gunpowder by more powerful
explosives have greatly diminished the demand for charcoal
and, therefore, the price obtained for it, while the stubbing of the
woodlands in the great wheat years, and the depression of
agriculture since, which has resulted in the cutting up of the
larger farms and estates, and the diversion of Epping Forest
(where charcoal was largely burnt) to the purpose of a pleasure
resort have all tended to reduce the output.
Yet, still, in the course of a ramble through the woods about