Coleford was formed at the point where three streams came together. The Col or Coller brook came in from the south. Thurstan’s Brook, so called in 1282, came from the east and the Sluts Brook came in from the north.

Romans were at Perrygrove and Tufthorn just south of Coleford. Deposits of coins by the thousand were found at the ore outcrops. The rich iron ore of the Crease Limestone was worked by surface digging, leaving the strange ‘scowles’ landscape around Coleford and at their most spectacular at Puzzlewood.

Iron was long produced by smelting ore with lots of local charcoal in small ‘bloomery’ furnaces. This smelting produced hard slag or ‘cinders’.

The road from Puzzlewood into Coleford, past Forest House, is called Cinderhill.

Long before the Iron Age, another iron ore had a use in burial rituals. This was ochre, in various browns and reds. Nearby Clearwell Caves was a deep iron mine. That mine produced pockets or ‘churns’ of ochre, with underground tools dating perhaps to around 2500 BC.

Historians often start with a place’s entry in the Domesday Book but there isn’t one for Coleford. Why? Domesday was a taxation record, King William didn’t need to tax what he owned outright, and he owned the site of Coleford.

In Norman times the Forest was a place where game for the royal larder, not trees, was nurtured. There was a ‘demesne’ area in the king’s hands, and an outer zone where Forest Law restricted land use for the benefit of game. Very few people were supposed to live in Royal Forests, so churches, such as at Newland, were built by the edge.

Coleford fell on the fault line between Staunton and Newland Manors, which delayed even town-centre church expansion until the 18th century.

The combination of mineral wealth and its important position led to the town as a place to work and somewhere to cater to travellers. The earliest written record of ‘Colevorde’ is from 1275. It had at least eight houses in 1349 with coal being mined in 1282.

The junction of the streams would have been marshy, a place travellers had to ford to get somewhere else. North of Coleford ran roads connecting London, Gloucester, Monmouth and Caerleon, all important Roman establishments. It connected to the River Wye, an old transport artery, less than four miles away. From the south towards the merging brooks was a track, called the ‘ore way’ by 1306, bringing traffic from Severn crossings at Chepstow and Beachley. From the south-east came what was the ‘coal way’ by 1345, bringing travellers from higher crossings of the Severn.

By 1607, Coleford had, literally, arrived on the map, a big tatty one with a rip through Coleford. A 1712 map shows the central street pattern with housing extended to Whitecliff.

In addition to its minerals, Coleford was in an agricultural area, as land transactions over the centuries showed. A market was a good way of attracting trade into a town. In 1661, Coleford had enough influence to be granted a market. In 1712 Sir Robert Atkyns wrote in his The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire:

“Colford, generally called Covert. The Town of this Hamlet confifts of 150 Houfes. It has an handsome Market-Houfe, and a weekly Market on Friday, and two Fairs, one on the ninth of June, and the other on the twenty fourth of November... There is a neat Chapel for the Ufe of the Town...”

The Market House was rebuilt in 1866 and demolished in 1968. The special edition of the New Regard Mary Sullivan tells about life around the Market Place and Caroline Prosser-Lodge’s writes about its surviving Clock Tower.

Turnpike roads, funded by tolls and tollgates, improved roads. The routes from the south into Coleford were turnpiked in 1796, most of the rest by 1831. Rudder’s 1779 A New History of Gloucestershire describes Colford as a small market town on the turnpike-road from Gloucester to Monmouth. That brought coaching inns, like the King’s Head, and services to the town.

In 1750, London-based carrier William Mountain advertised west-bound wagons through Colford and in 1814 another London carrier had ‘Old Established Waggons’ through it.

The New Regard has an oral history of the life of Doris Harvey who lived in the former Poolway turnpike house by Nicola Wynn. For a view of Forest poverty, Cecile Hunt has an article on Coleford’s workhouse.

With increasing coal exports via Coleford into Wales, pressure on Coleford’s roads was relieved by the tramway opened in 1812 through – literally through – Coleford. Coming in from the east past Poolway, called after the royal fishpond of a 1282 survey, it entered Coleford just north of the town centre. It crossed two streets, then ran along the backs of some shops, where it is still called The Tram Road. It exited to Whitecliff, then Redbrook and Monmouth. In its first year, it moved over 10,000 tons of coal but was moribund after 1841. The tramroad was funded by mine financiers and the backers of the Whitecliff Ironworks.

This 1802 attempt at a coke-fired blast furnace was unsuccessful. The owners brought down Scottish metallurgist David Mushet to plan and run a rebuild. Mushet rapidly disengaged himself, but remained in Forest House on Cinderhill, with daughter Margaret. By 1818, he set up a largely experimental iron works at Darkhill, just south of Coleford. Mushet’s youngest son, Robert, was also a great experimenter. His major contributions were the first highly durable steel rails, an improvement to the Bessemer steel making process, and the first good titanium alloy, tool steel. He agreed to transfer his technology to Samuel Osborne in the emerging steel town of Sheffield, and the

Darkhill Titanic steelworks closed in 1871. For a picture of the Mushets, and of other notable Coleford people, see the article on Tom Cousins’ Coleford Murals.

The 1856 Post Office Directory for Coleford gave a list of 16 gentlemen and clerics, then 130 traders including two surgeons, three solicitors, a lady blacksmith, a music seller and a rhubarb pot maker. Robert Mushet is listed as an iron mines proprietor. The 1851 population was 2,300. In 1859, Slater’s Directory said:

“Coleford itself is pleasantly situated at the western border of the county, next Monmouthshire. The coal and iron mines in this neighbourhood are very considerable… The town which is gas-lighted, consists principally of one tolerably spacious street, in which is the market place: the environs are exceedingly pleasant, and some of the views are very picturesque… A school, conducted upon the national plan, was opened here in 1835, and still continues to dispense its benefits to children of either sex…”

Gas was then made from coal, from the 1840 gas works.

In 1864, David Mushet’s daughter Margaret wrote in Chambers’ Magazine:

“...the Forest of Dean is a singular nook of the British Isles; no railways traverse it; the hills that rise on every side guard it from the incursions of the train...”

But trade directories made it obvious that Coleford did not have the rail links of competitor towns. The 1882 OS map shows that the Severn and Wye tramroad had been converted to a steam railway with a terminus south-west of Coleford centre.

In 1883, a steam version of the Monmouth tramway made it to an adjacent terminus, via a road bridge by the Baptist Chapel and a cutting by Mushet’s Forest House. Averil Kear’s article in the New Regard tells the story of the Baptist Chapel.

Other changes were coming. The 1926-27 Town and Country Directory showed no Coleford wheelwright but a motor mechanic – with a telephone number – and car hire at the Temperance Hotel.

Electricity arrived around 1924. Drinking water was coming in by cart in 1873, and full piped water in 1932. The unfortunate three streams became open sewers until the early 1930s, when they were piped and a treatment works was built in the early 1950s.

In 1948 County Planner Gordon Payne wrote that two-thirds of Coleford buildings were only fit for imminent demolition, while envisaging a future population of 12,000. Coleford held its nerve.

Today, the old centre is a Conservation Area with a dozen groups of Listed Buildings. The Pevsner architectural guide gives five pages to the late 17th-early 18th century centre. Many of the ground floors have many decades of being shop frontages, but look up to the doorcases, windows and roofs.

To ease the pressure of unemployment after the Second World War, industry was encouraged and Carter’s soft drinks business has grown into the town’s biggest employer. The history of Ribena and Suntory is described in the New Regard by Nigel Costlery.

With mass car ownership, tourism has reached many places, though it is often difficult for local communities to benefit. The Forest of Dean is an attractive destination for outdoor pursuits such as cycling, walking and wildlife. The old railway tracks make easy cycle paths.

Colefordians will have little doubt that theirs is the most attractive and well-equipped town in the Forest.