Sorry to come in a bit late on this discussion on coke - I've been away.
of direct relevance to coke in the forest of Dean a lot earlier is John
Evelyn's mention of a project for 'charring sea coal' in Greenwich on
11th July 1656. the experiments were being carried out on behalf of Sir
John Winter - who was, of course,the Forest of dean industrialist. He
was in the Tower for treason at the time and so no doubt found Greenwich
more convenient than the Forest itself! I don't know what happened to
Winter's experiments and would be very interested if anyone knew more.
The earliest coke patent was also from Greenwich - Thomas Peyton (Pat 98
26th July 1636 - it does cross my mind that one of that dates could be
wrong!). Again I would be very interested if anyone knows anything about
Peyton and his work. There were Peyton landholders in Greenwich a bit
later than that and Evelyn was in touch with the Peyton family. It has
been said that this patent is connected with copperas manufacture -
again being set up in Greenwich/Deptford by Nicholas Crispe a bit later
than this. I would be interested to know if Winter was anything to do
with Peyton - or is this all too far off the subject of iron smelting a
century later?
I am hoping to bring out some of my work on gas industry residuals in
east London as a book soon - which will include a tiny tiny section on
coke.
Mary Mills
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|