NEW ROLLING ground. It was erected in the fummer of 1785 is thirty-fix yards long, ten yards wide, and fix ftories high, and is worked with a water-wheel eighteen feet high, and feven feet wide, with a fall of water of fixteen feet. Ar fome diftance beyond this is the NEW ROLLING MILL, erected in 1737 *. The largest and most commodious building, for the purpofe it is applied to, of any in the kingdom. Its area within the walls measures eighty-fix feet in length, by fixty-nine in breadth, floored with iron flags. Its height in the center is twenty-eight feet and an half. The roof is fingle, and covered with copper, fupported in the center by two pillars, eleven feet and a half diftant from each other; on their tops are tranfverse timbers fupporting one end of each beam which more immediately fuftains the roof, the other end refting on the wall. THE water-wheels are of caft-iron, upon a curious construction. They are three in number, each of which receives its fupply of water, at a height of about forty-five degrees, from an iron-pipe fixed in the bottom of the penftock, and fo fitted to the buckets of the wheel, that scarce any water is wafted (of which we are studiously careful.) Wheels fo receiving their water are called breaft-wheels, of which kind I believe all the wheels on this stream are, excepting that belonging to the corn-mill, and another at this company's brass-works, which is ufed for grinding calamine; the water by that mode of delivery communicating the most powerful impulfe, and the most steady motion. The iron-wheels here are twenty feet diameter, and they will, when unclogged with • This is fuperintended by Mr. Jofeph Thomas, to whom I am indebted for the account. heavy weights, perform twenty revolutions in a minute. Now if we suppose a wheel of that diameter moving upon a plane with the fame rapidity with which it revolves on its axis, it will, in a year, describe a line nearly equal in length to five circles of our globe at the equator. The yard and refervoir of water pertaining to this noble manufactory are fuitable to its magnitude, and by much the most spacious on the Holywell ftream. THE number of men employed here are about forty-fix. REMARK S. ift. It is a certain fact that the people conftantly employed in the copper-manufactories are as healthy, and arrive to as great an age, as the generality of people employed in other occupations not connected with fire or metal; but they are scrupulous obfervers of the antient law, which forbade to eat with unwafhen hands; and they find it highly neceffary to perform a careful ablution of the whole body at left once a week, to rub off the copper duft, which adheres to their bodies, and occasions violent eruptions of a green color, evincing, by the tinge, their origin. The pain and symptoms are easily removed by washing with clean water; but if that is neglected, the confequences become seríous, and even to require chirurgical affistance. 2d. YOUNG dogs, which have acquired a habit of licking copper sheets or bars, have never been known to furvive long. The metallic virus by that means conveyed into the inteftines foon deftroys the animal by violent purging. D d 2d. YET 3d, YET it may deferve notice, that the writer of these hints having formerly kept a great number of poultry running about the yard, he obferved that the fowls preferred drinking the water from a fhallow copper pan that lay out of doors, and was generally full of rain-water, tinged of a deep green color, to fresh clear water, of which there was abundance. No ill effect was ever known to have happened to them from the green: water, though a fucceffion of poultry reforted to it for years. THE writer of this having been employed on the spot, from the firft opening of the ground for the foundations of the mill and other buildings, found frequent proofs that the furface of the land had formerly been about fourteen or fixteen feet lower than at the time the buildings were erected. His inducements to form that opinion were, Ift. THAT though the foil contained many large pebbles throughout its whole depth, yet at the depth of twelve to fixteeen or eighteen feet, grey pebbles of large fize were every where found in great abundance, and mixed with fand or gravel, juft as they appear on the fhelving fhores of many rivers." 2d. Ar the depth of fifteen feet, under the wood where the warehouse now ftands, the head of a battle-axe was picked up. The writer not chancing to be on the fpot when it was taken up, could gather no information whether any part of the handle remained, but fuppofes not. He was fhewn the fpot where it lay, and measured fifteen feet to the furface. 3d. AND the most decifive proof is, that, after cutting down an oak-tree of pretty large girth, and afterwards clearing away the root, in digging ftill deeper, for the foundation of the prefent warehouse, 7 warehoufe, the workmen found a lime-kiln, of very fmall dimenfion, perhaps it would contain half a ton of lime-ftone, but perfect, and having calcined lime in its bafon. It was conftructed of the fame kind of red fand-ftone as that now below Wepre. The bottom of that kiln now forms the loweft foundation of the north-east corner of the warchoufe, which is nearly level with the furface of the cotton-mill-pool below it. IMMEDIATELY above the laft are the works under the fuperintendency of Mr. Daniel Donbavand, who with great civility informed me of their origin, and confequent improvements. Thefe are on the fite of the brafs-battery-mills, built in the year 1765, and fet to work 20th Sept. 1766. The firft brass made at Greenfield, was on the 20th August, 1766, then held by Meff. Patten and Co. Since January 1786 they have been in the hands of Thomas Williams, efq. and Co. under the firm of The Greenfield Copper and Brass Company, who have very much improved them by various erections, fo as to enable them to finish goods for Africa, America, and moft other markets, viz. brafs Neptunes, or large pans, in which the negroes make falt; pans for getting the gold out of their rivers, and for various other purposes; kettles; brafs and copper rods; bright and black manillas-the first are rings for ornaments to the arms and legs, the laft for the current money of the country. The laft are not unlike the golden bracelets of the antient Britons, the ends turned up and flatted; and add to these various forts of latten, brass, &c. for mathematical inftruments, &c. &c. THE word latten is applied to works in brass, with which, for certain purposes, is an admixture of any other metal. Some GREENFIELD BRASS COMPANY. 212 times it is made a fynonym of brafs itself. Watfon's Effays, IV. 70. and in the fame page: and Stringer, in his Opera Mineralia Explicata, p. 34. gives us the qualities of the faid latten, as explained in the patent of 7th Elizabeth to Humphrey and Shutz, abovementioned, which was granted to Shutz for his great cunning, knowlege and experience, as well in the finding the calamine ftone, called in Latin, lapis calaminaris, and in the right and proper commodity thereof, for the compofition of mixed me⚫tal, commonly called latten, and in reducing it to be soft and malleable, and alfo in apting, manuring, and working the fame for and into all forts of battery wares, caft-work, and wire, and alfo in the mollifying and manuring of iron, and drawing • and forging of the fame into wire and plates for the making of armor, and alfo for divers other needful and profitable • ufes." ( THE word latten is also used for a diftinct metal, as appears by two patents, one of the 30th Henry VI. to his chaplain and controller of all his mines of gold, &c. in Devon and Cornwal, (fee Stringer, p. 20.); the other in the patent of 10th Elizabeth, (see Watfon, iv. 70.) both which mention mines of latten. But, as the Bifhop obferves, whatever the name did mean, it is now lost. I can only fay, that calamine does appear in fo many, and fo different forms, that the application might have been to one of them, fince the qualities feem to have been the fame. THE head of water to these mills is about 21 feet; and the fuperficial furface of the pool or refervoir, about 70,696 feet. ALL |