Blacksmiths Row

Damp February Sunday afternoon. The house faces out onto a river. You might have to click on the image to get the full scale of the mess in the back yard.

As the name implies, Blacksmith’s Row used to be the home of a village blacksmith. It used to be a thriving business, but the blacksmith has died, and now the house is boarded up. The blacksmith is remembered as a stern man, unfriendly to strangers, loyal to locals.

He was very choosy about who he would deal with - non-regulars had to wait, and bad payers were often turned away. If he didn’t like someone he would refuse to deal with them or ask them to pay upfront. If he thought you were a good sort, you could wait until the end of the year and settle up when he sent you his bill (a handwritten document many pages long, listing every nut and bolt, with a grand total at the end).

He began his career in the 1940s when hundreds of horses needed shoeing at least once per year (more often if they worked on roads). Carts also needed iron tyres fitted to their wooden wheels if they were to work on the roads. The rest of the time he would beat out ploughshares, re-point harrow tines, re-shaft hand tools.

As farming became mechanised he developed a sideline in repairing machinery, as well as buying and selling second-hand machinery. Farmers asked his advice before buying at auctions. He was proud of his work, guarded his reputation and took things back if they didn’t work.

As his business expanded he took over neighbouring cottages (six tiny houses and pub) and created his yard. This expansion brought him into contact with professionals (solicitors, council officials, taxmen) whom he regarded as obstructive parasites and against whom he waged a low-level campaign of non-cooperation. In one of the cottages used to live one of the village’s formidable “grandmas” (there were several) - she used to ride a three-wheeled tricycle, and acted as an agent of social control (reporting bad behaviour, watching people come and go, telling off children for the slightest indecorum).



At a village fair last summer I saw this blacksmith at work. He is beating out a horseshoe on a small anvil. Probably this sort of demonstration will eventually be banned under “health and safety”.



Display of different sorts of horseshoes - Rockerby Bar, Hunter Hind, Egg Bar etc.

Also at the fair: “Weathervanes hand-made and hand-painted”. There is a surprising demand for decorative ironwork. We have a weathervane (of a bull) on one of the barns.



Going around a village “history day” I came across this tumbledown cottage. I thought at first it was an old shed, but actually it used to be the home of the village blacksmith. A note on the door (which you can see) explained that the blacksmith and his wife had ten children and worked until he was 68.



Close up of part of the note. I was interested in the reference to one of the children being employed in the fields scaring birds. Thomas Hardy’s Jude The Obscure opens with the young Jude working as a bird scarer.



Collection of blacksmith’s tools. People who keep these collections together deserve a medal. Often when the blacksmith dies the tools are dispersed and lost.



Why is this bucket full of holes? I should have asked. Looking at the picture now, the holes bother me (I’m assuming it is not a surrealist work of art).



Picture of the Blacksmiths Arms (taken last summer). This is one of the nicest pubs I know, at a quiet road junction over in the west of the county. The beer is the very best.

Seeing the blacksmith’s shop all boarded up made me feel very melancholy - so much of our county’s way of life is disappearing. There was an interesting programme on the Business Channel today about Second Life. Perhaps I should recreate the county (in every detail) on Second Life, and see if people will pay to “move” there.