History - Hornos
The site that Hornos occupies today was populated in the third millennium BC, in the period corresponding to the Copper Age, and remained occupied during the Bronze Age, second millennium BC. A cemetery excavated in an artificial cave was found in Hornos, dated to around 4800 years BC.
Later the settlement was abandoned until medieval times. Numerous remains of tombstones, coins and ceramic pieces have been found at the La Laguna deposit all dating to the Roman era.
In Arabic sources the town is cited as, Fornus, because of its inaccessible situation. According to various sources it was a hins, a village whose location on top of the rock made it inaccessible, in addition to including a walled enclosure, perhaps with some other defence on the highest part.
During Islamic era, Hornos and the surrounding area suffered periods of rebellions against the successive authorities that sought to impose themselves. The majority of the population was muladí, although Syrians and other less important Arab families also entered.
Hins Furnus (Kilns) was an area of great splendour during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, consolidating like most of the neighbouring cities as a border region from which war expeditions against the Christians would depart.
The town was conquered in 1239 by the Master of Santiago, Don Rodrigo Yñiguez, following his attempt to penetrate to the south in order to isolate the Kingdom of Murcia whose King Ibn Hud had been assassinated in 1238, obtaining possession of Hornos. Hence the error in the Relaciones de Felipe II that attribute the conquest “to a Master of Santiago, who was called Pedro Pérez Pelay Correa”, when he was not a Master until the last decades of 1242.
Hornos was dependent on Segura de la Sierra and on the diocese of Cartagena. The Order built the current Castillo de Hornos with a keep and a cistern. This last one and the other three towers of the enclosure are older in date, dating from the Almohad period.
Together with Segura de la Sierra, the members of the Manrique family actively intervened in Castilian politics in the fifteenth century. This family was generally in conflict with Kings Juan II and Enrique IV since they always controlled a good part of the forces and resources of the Order of Santiago, of which Don Rodrigo Manrique, Commander of Segura, came to proclaim himself Grand Master, resisting and defeating in Hornos the troops sent against him by Juan II and Don Álvaro de Luna. The period of greatest expansion of this population was from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. In 1833 the municipality was demarcated within the province of Jaén, after a stage of affiliation and belonging to the province of Murcia.