Blacksmiths-They-Shoe Horses Don-t They

SEPTEMBER 2021: BLACKSMITHS? THEY SHOE HORSES DON’T THEY?

For our first, in person, indoor, meeting after the pandemic about 60 members and visitors were very pleased, not only to see each other, but also to welcome our speaker David James who had spent his whole life in his family business of blacksmiths and metalworkers. He was born in the house adjoining the forge in Broughton in Northamptonshire where the family firm of George James and Son had been established in 1841. David showed several typical Victorian style family photos of his relations standing outside the premises and pointed out that the adjoining cottages had been incorporated into that forge in the 1950s.

In his childhood he helped with various tasks including fitting wheel ‘’tyres’’ to cartwheels, a job involving fire, hot iron and water and some quick action. He then explained the meaning of the title to his talk. The traditional village blacksmith fitted iron shoes to horses as well as making and repairing tools both for household and agricultural use. However, in 1976 the Blacksmiths Registration Act came into force and in order to be able to shoe horses, blacksmiths had to register and were then called farriers. The traditional blacksmith carried on making and repairing not only tools but also taking on commissions for new works such as sculptures, as well as renovation and conservation work. Such work is now the mainstay of the business which has also ceased repairing church clocks.

The slow bucolic image many townspeople might have of village blacksmiths doesn’t apply these days with craftsmen having to be efficient, use modern tools and produce high quality work to a price and on time. Although there is the traditional anvil and many hammers and other basic tools still in the workshop, there are, nowadays, two forges and a hydraulic hammer delivering 160 strokes per minute. Although he did not expressly say so, much of the design work and calculations must be done on a computer. He is also a member of The Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths. Although there are several shapes of anvil and hammers, many craftsmen soon find the best for the work they do and hammer shafts have got shorter over the years.

Despite carrying out many small repair jobs the mainstay of the business is in public art, major conservation and restoration and such decorative objects as fire irons and sundials. David then went on to show pictures of some of the firms work starting with public art. Examples are of gates to a park in Burgh le Marsh, Lincolnshire and railings to St Ives Methodist Church. He showed a series of village signs including the one many of us know at Great Glen.

Restoration and conservation work was often to long lengths of railings or gates to parks and country houses, these included gates at Kimbolton Castle and at Hampton Court Palace. Many of the originals were in wrought iron but these days low carbon mild steel is used. Each different type of raw material needs different techniques, some very old, to join and weld pieces together. In particular the often seen scroll work in gates is exceedingly difficult to weld. Many old pieces of iron work have got the maker’s stamp impressed on them in the same way as masons and carpenters also marked their work. The ‘paint’ in which old gates and railings were finished is hard to replicate, firstly because it is lead based (a big no-no these days) and a five gallon can of appropriate modern paint can cost over £950.

Other work involves churches, such as St Peters, Northampton, Southwell Minster and St. Chads RC Cathedral in Birmingham. These works usually involve the screen which separates the nave from the chancel, often in timber but also in many cases iron is used and they are usually very decorative. Local examples were at Kings Norton and Great Bowden. The latter also contains a major wall painting titled ‘The Doom’. Gate piers are often made of complicated iron work that needs repair. Some examples that the firm has worked on include those at Kew Palace, moved there from Hampton Court, and at Trinity College, Oxford where the piers supported so called gates but were really there to frame the view of the parkland outside the boundary.

This was altogether a fascinating talk, (if a little too long) well illustrated, on a subject not touched upon by the Society in its programme before.

Report by Colin Towell