John Norden's The surveyors dialogue from 1607 gives a fascinating description of deforestation and how the furnaces functioned. I am going to excerpt here and modernize the spelling. Much research has been done on Shakespeare and his concerns about forest ecology. Read this and understand where that comes from. Neville was watching the forests being cut down and he was playing a big part in it.
Note the reference to bellows and hammers. As I mentioned in previous posts, these were driven by waterwheels. If Neville wrote the works of Shakespeare, there should be metaphors about these things in the plays and poems:
Such a heat issueth out of the many forges, & furnaces, for the making of Iron, and out of the glass kilns, as hath devoured many famous woods within the Wealds.... It is no marvel, if Sussex and other places you speak off, be deprived of this benefit: for I have heard, there are, or lately were in Sussex, near 140 hammers and furnaces for Iron... the hammers and furnaces spend, each of them in every 24. hours, 2, 3, or four loads of char coal, which in a year amounts to an infinite quantity, as you can better account by your Arithmatique, than I.
That which you say, is true, but they work not all, all the year: for many of them lack water in the Summer to blow their bellows. And to say truth, the consuming of much of these in the Weld, is no such great prejudice to the weal public, as is the overthrow of wood & timber, in places where there is no great quantity: for I have observed, that the cleansing of many of these welde grounds, hath redounded rather to the benefit, then to the hurt of the Country: for where woods did grow in superfluous abundance, there was lack of pasture for kine, and of arable land for corn.... Beside, people bred amongst woods, are naturally more stubborn, and uncivil, then in the Champion Countries.
Another example, Irelands naturall history, 1657, and even mentions the necessity of repairing them.
Here is a description of the bellows. Note the reference to pipes:
"a list of whose names and offices here followeth: wood-cutters, who fell the timber; sawyers, to saw the timber; carpenters, smiths, masons, and bellow-makers, to erect the iron-works, with all the appurtenances thereof, and to repair them from time to time"
Here is another example from much later in 1674:
IN Iron-work Furnaces are the greatest and most regular moving Bellows that are any where used; the which are commonly turned by the evenest over∣shot Wheels. Now the Times wherein these Bel∣lows rise and fall, are Roots of the Strength of such Bellows-blast upon the fire; for rising in double Quickness admits double air in the same Time; which being in like manner squeezed out a∣gain, double Quickness makes double Expulsion, and consequently double Swiftness; (the whole pas∣sing through the same Twire-pipe in half the time;) and double Swiftness makes quadruple effects upon the fire or Furnace, as aforesaid.
here's something from 1555 on bellows and furnaces:
Anghiera, Pietro Martire d', 1457-1526. | Eden, Richard, 1521?-1576.
The decades of the newe worlde or west India conteynyng the nauigations and conquestes of the Spanyardes,
yowe muste chiefely auoyde the lacke of water, the vse of water, as a thynge of greatest importaunce and most necessarie in this effecte: for by the force and weyght of the course hereof, wheeles and dyuers other ingenious instrumentes are adapted with ease to lyfte vppe greate bellowes to make fyers of great poure, to beate with hammers of great weyght, and to turne myghtie and stronge eugens, by the force whereof the trauayles of men are so much furthered, that withowt such helpe, it were in maner impossible to ouercome suche tedious trauayles or to arryue to the ende of the woorke, forasmuch as the force of one wheele may lyfte more, and that more safely then the paynefull labour of a hundreth men:
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