jan 1, 1608 - bloom

Description:

In early iron forge accounts ‘bloom’ was the word for the iron that was produced in a bloomer hearth, a primitive furnace; a mass of relatively pure malleable iron which had received its first hammering. The OED has an example of the term in the Old English period, <i>a.</i>1000, but then no further references until 1584-5, and then by inference, since an Act of Parliament referred to ‘any manor of iron-mills, furnace, finery or blomary’. By then it was also being used of the wrought iron produced in the finery hearth at the forge (CAM/36). Early Yorkshire references include: 1352 <i>vynt quatre blomes</i>, Creskeld (Th41/301); 1395 ‘rendering for the wood 8d for every <i>12 blumhes</i>’, Arthington (YRS63/71). Later we have: 1568 <i>80 dusson of colle wyll burne 96 blomes of irene</i>, Esholt (BAS10/247). The word is actually at the heart of a rich vocabulary which touches also on place-names and surnames and includes several attributive uses: 1507 <i>both blome herth and strynge herth</i>, Norton (TWH14/124); 1568 <i>for evere blome in the blome harthe 7d</i>, Esholt (BAS10/247); 1608 <i>1 pair of Bloom Bellows; 1 Bloom Wheel; 1 Bloom Hammer; 1 Bloom Wedge; 2 Bloom Axes,</i> Barnby (DD70/56). Note the minor place-name Bloom House Green in Darton, near Barnsley, first recorded in 1584 (PNWR1/318).

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