This 1805 engraving by William Pickett shows the ironworks at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire. Iron was first smelted using coke made from coal at Coalbrookdale in 1709.
Image: Science Museum / SSPL
Daniel Defoe
Between 1724 and 1726, the writer Daniel Defoe travelled throughout Britain. In Sussex, he saw the iron industry's effect on local fuel resources:
'...the great... iron-works... are carried on at such a prodigious expence of wood, that they... complain of... leaving the next age to want timber for building their navies.'
Defoe believed that woodlands were an 'inexhaustible store-house of timber', but as industry grew this was no longer true.
What were the alternatives to using wood for fuel?
