Cornwall Iron Furnace

Cornwall Furnace is a charcoal iron-making complex in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, built by Peter Grubb between 1739 and 1742 with a sandstone stack about 30 feet high. It includes the furnace, casting house, charcoal house, and water-wheel and steam-engine rooms, along with service buildings, an ironmaster's mansion, a miners' village of stone double houses, and the adjacent open-pit ore mine on Big, Middle, and Grassy Hills. The furnace produced pig iron from 1742 to 1883 and, during the Revolution, cast cannon and shot for the navy. Its ore deposit was among the largest in the country before the Lake Superior fields were developed. The complex is regarded as one of the best-preserved charcoal furnaces in the United States and illustrates how early American iron plantations were organized, with farmland, woodcutting, and worker housing supporting the furnace. Coleman family ownership from the late 1700s shaped the mansion and the later modernization of 1856-1857.