Monument record MDR7162 - Possible iron smelting site, now submerged below Foremark Reservoir

Farey includes "Foremark, NW of the park" in a list of slag heaps (most of which are charcoal blast furnace sites). The most likely location is northwest of Foremark Park Farm, now beneath Foremark Reservoir. The site may have been either an otherwise unrecorded blast furnace, or a bloomery. (1-3) No evidence has yet been found for the history of this site, although it may be significant that the major owner in Foremark was the Burdett family and that in 1689 Elizabeth Burdett married Charles Jennens of Erdington, Warwickshire, whose family had the nearby furnace at Hartshorne around the same date. Cranstone (Authority 2) suggests two possible sites for the furnace which would fit Farey's directions and commonsense topographical deduction. One of these lies at SK 331235, on the parish boundary north-west of Foremark Park Farm. This is the more likely of the two. It now lies beneath Foremark Reservoir. (4)