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Making iron in the Forest of Dean began before the Roman period.  With the wealth of local iron-ore and ample wood for charcoal it continued over the centuries.  In the years around 1600AD, new large scale technology arrived in the form of the charcoal-fuelled blast furnace. During the 17th century the Forest had more of these furnaces at work than anywhere else in Britain. Gunns Mill Furnace was one of them, built in 1625 and rebuilt in 1682-3.

The furnace is one of the most complete of its kind in Britain; rare and important, and the only surviving example in the south of England.  After 1740 the site became a paper mill run by the Lloyd Family.