An iron constable is listed as a piece of equipment at Scarlets Furnace in Kent in 1695. Has anyone any idea what it is? Philip Riden listed the term in the glossary he provided in his edition of the letters of George Sitwell, the Derbyshire ironmaster, which were written three decades earlier, but was unable to provide a definition.
This is from the 1981 facsimilie edition of Nicholl’s Iron Making in the Forest of Dean p.39
“Constable. A bar of very great substance and length, kept always lying by a furnace is readiness for extraordinary purposes in which uncommon strength and power required”
