Henry George Nicholls

Henry George Nicholls was an English clergyman and local historian closely associated with the Forest of Dean. Iron Making in the Olden traces the district’s iron industry through physical remains, local traditions, archival records, and evidence about furnaces, mines, and woodland resources. Published in the nineteenth century, the study looks back to Roman activity and follows changes in production through medieval and later periods. Library records identify Nicholls as the author and connect the book with his broader historical work on the Forest of Dean. Its value lies in the way he joins documentary research to observations made in a landscape still marked by industrial use. Iron Making in the Olden also discusses the Book of Dennis, mining customs, charcoal, and the relationship between local privileges and iron manufacture. For readers of industrial history, Nicholls offers an early account of how geology, forests, labour, and law shaped one regional economy. The work complements his larger history of the Forest and preserves evidence gathered before many surviving traces disappeared.