Added limestone acted as a sponge, absorbing the impurities and allowing the molten iron to flow from the bottom of the furnace into clay and sand trenches. The furnace fire was fed from above, and tour visitors are invited to peer down a 30-foot stone chute to the furnace bed. The wheel machinery occupies the level below. On the bottom level, workers tended streams of molten iron. If you want to see Cornwall, you have to see the furnace, says Karin Viozzi, custodial guide supervisor at the furnace.
Some people are very surprised and amazed by what s still here.
Especially the local people who come and discover what s been in their back yard all along. The tour snakes along stairways and catwalks around the wheel room perimeter. It s my favorite part of the tour, continues Viozzi, who has worked at the furnace for seven years. If that part of the tour doesn t get you excited, you re just never going to be excited. By then, iron ore boulders were reduced in size by a series of crushers.