Cunsey Bloom Forge, WIndermere - Community Archaeology Survey and Excavation

Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) and the University of Salford were invited by the
Lake District National Park Authority to provide supervision and support to facilitate and
enable a community archaeology project examining the Cunsey Bloomery Forge, close to
Near Sawrey in South Lakeland (centred on NGR SD 37700 93630) (Fig 1); the project
was financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Cunsey Bloomery Forge is a site of
considerable archaeological and historical importance, not least as it provides a very rare
surviving example of an early seventeenth century bloomery forge that retains significant
physical evidence for its development and subsequent conversion for use as a refining forge
in the early eighteenth century. The importance of the site was highlighted in 2003, when
the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA) commissioned a geophysical survey
and excavation of an ancillary building on the site by OA North. Some of the site was
covered with modern detritus, and since then the site had continued to be used as a rubbish
dump and had also become heavily overgrown with trees, raising concerns that the
condition of this significant heritage resource was deteriorating.
In view of the importance of the site, the LDNPA proposed that Cunsey Bloomery Forge be
subject to further archaeological investigation as part of the ‘Rusland Horizons: Working a
Lakeland Landscape’ project. Designed by the LDNPA, and financed by Heritage Lottery
Fund, the Cunsey Bloomery Forge study is one of four community projects that are to be
undertaken as part of the ‘Rusland Horizons – The Lives in the Landscape’, which is a core
element of the overarching project. A principal aim of the project was to involve people
from the local community with an interest in archaeology and in their own local historic
environment and to provide training in archaeological excavation and survey that would
also provide new information on the wealth of archaeological remains at the site.