belonging to Illan". Deer park? Speed's map of Sussex, published 1610, shows Worth Forest with two enclosed deer parks -Paddockhurst (now Worth Abbey) and Tilgate. Paddockhurst Park still features on modern maps, but there is no discernible traces of a deer park in the modern Tilgate Park. If any deer park was here, it might have been on the site of the present Tilgate Playing Fields, where a random scatter of large, spreading oak trees was recorded on the 1875 large-scale Ordnance Survey map (a few survive). Tilgate Furnace Blast furnaces and forges The landscape of the Park area changed drastically when the blast furnace was introduced into English ironworking in the late Middle Ages. The first was erected in 1490, and it transformed the Wealden iron industry. Unlike a clay pot bloomery, in which the iron didn't quite melt, a blast furnace provided a continuous supply of liquid iron. It was a hollow brick tower, with iron ore and charcoal put into the top and molten iron tapped out of the bottom. A strong blast of air was provided by a pair of huge water-powered bellows (a pair so that the air flow did not pulse). The very important point about the furnace was, it had to operate continuously throughout its lifespan. A shortage of any one of its three ingredients (ore, charcoal, air) would destroy the furnace. The ironmasters had to plan very carefully to ensure a continuous supply of the three. The first local blast furnaces were two at "Worth Furnace", erected by one Willam Leavitt in 1547. This was on the Stamford Brook in the present Worth Forest, just to the north of the eastern end of the railway bridge on the Parish Lane from Pease Pottage (the bridle path here crosses the site of the old millpond, south of the dam and slag heaps). "Tilgate Furnace" first appears in 1606, when a lease was renewed so it had already been in production by then. The two furnaces, Worth and Tilgate, were associated with forges downstream at Blackwater (now in Maidenbower) and at Tinsley. Charcoal Charcoal for firing the furnace was too fragile to carry far, so must have been sourced locally. The 2011 archaeological survey found two charcoal oven platforms in the Forest. A steady supply of charcoal was so important that Wealden ironmasters were entering into coppice wood futures, buying supplies before they had