Demand for charcoal needed to feed the furnace shaped the population and landscape. One of the most powerful descriptions of the site has been passed down through oral history to Brigadier John MacFarlane (who is the last native speaker of Lorne Gaelic): ‘When the furnace started up, the local people used to say it was like hell on earth, because at night for the first time in living memory, the sky was red with light pollution from the furnace fires’.
Images:
- Caleb Robert Stanley, Gartsherrie by Night (1853); Charcoal Burn (2023)
- Léonard Defrance, Interior of a Foundry with Visitors 1789); Bonawe (2022)
