The din of the iron hammer was hushed, the glare of the furnace faded, the last blast of the bellows was blown, and the district returned to its original rural solitude.

Some of the furnace-ponds were drained and planted with hops or willows; others formed beautiful lakes in retired pleasure-grounds; while the remainder were used to drive flour-mills, as the streams in North Kent, instead of driving fulling-mills, were employed to work paper-mills.

All that now remains of the old iron-works are the extensive beds of cinders from which material is occasionally taken to mend the Sussex roads, and the numerous furnace-ponds, hammer-posts, forges, and cinder places, which mark the seats of the ancient manufacture.
[1] WILKINS, Leges Sax.

25.
[2] Life of St.Egwin, in Capgrave's Nova Legenda Anglioe.

Alcester was, as its name indicates, an old Roman settlement (situated on the Icknild Street), where the art of working in iron was practised from an early period.