Rearranged Summer meeting & AGM 2025
Following postponement due to the weather, the Summer Meeting and AGM will now be held on
SATURDAY 6TH SEPTEMBER 2025
at
Dial Post Village Hall, Worthing Road, Dial Post, West Sussex, RH13 8NH
Non-members of WIRG are welcome to the Summer Meeting and site visit
Agenda for the day
11.00 to 12.00 Coffee / tea – book stall.
12.00 Introduction to Shipley Forge
12.30 Annual General Meeting of the Wealden Iron Research Group.
13.00 Lunch break: Lunch is not provided; please bring your own – you can picnic on the village green or in the hall or there is an excellent pub. Food is also available at The Crown Inn, 100m N of the Hall, or the Knepp Wilding Restaurant at the Knepp Estate car park (if you wish to re-mortgage your house!).
14.30 Depart from outside the Crown Inn for site visit to Shipley Forge, on the Knepp rewilding estate. Park in Shipley Village, School Lane RH13 8PL. (see map). A 2 mile return walk to the site via Shipley’s 12C church to see the tomb of Thomas Caryll owner of Shipley Forge and Knepp Furnace. (For the less agile a few cars can be parked on the verge in Swallows Lane at the junction of Pound Lane & Countryman Lane – see map – but park well south of the junction which is on a bend). There remains a 500m walk along a metalled farm track to the forge.
The walk from Shipley to the Forge site will be along footpaths, a lane and a farm track (see map below). The distance is one mile each way. The forge site is now fenced off as part of Knepp’s reintroduction of beavers but the original bay and water supply are evident and the pond is in water – albeit confined by a modern bay. Recent finds consist of a forge bottom (slag tapped out of the finery hearth ) and a heavy iron plate which was probably the base of the forge. Straker also found the tail end of a sow at the site which is now on display at Horsham Museum.
