The Castle

Iron has been produced for 4,000 years (give or take a year or two). In those early years it was created by heating iron ore with charcoal. This took several hours and the resulting iron was hammered into shape to form agricultural tools and weapons. The supply of charcoal depended on an abundance of forestry, but those forests were also required to provide wood for shipbuilding. Too many wars resulted in the depletion of forests (not to mention lives, of course) but the Merthyr area was, and still is, abundant in coal. But coal has too high a sulphur content so was not suitable for iron production. So now let's briefly bring Abraham Darby into the story.