A Village Blacksmith

I soon found out I was at everyone’s beck and call. Every morning each hearth had to be filled with coke; with 6 hearths this took a long time. Mid morning was the time to collect the milk money and go across the road to Bowling Alley and to Pearson Marsdens Dairy for the requisite bottles of milk. There were no tea breaks in those days and a swig of milk, when required, was the only refreshment available.

Although there were three power hammers there were still many jobs that required a striker and one had to quickly learn how to swing a sledge hammer and be available when called.

The worst job for a blacksmith’s apprentice apart from striking with the sledge hammer was the delivery and collection of chisels to the stone stand at the end of Birds Royd. Blocks of stone and rough hewn flagstones were brought to the railway sidings from local quarries, where they were worked on and then loaded straight onto rail trucks for dispatch.  Our method for transporting the chisels to the stone stand was by means of a wheelbarrow. Unfortunately the road was paved with granite setts, or cobbles, all the way from Ogden Lane to Birds Royd and River Street, not to mention the tram lines, with a loop line for passing, near Jackson’s joiners’ shop, all of which made the journey difficult. I started with an old wooden barrow, which soon fell apart. As you can imagine the wheel took a battering from the setted road and it was difficult to keep the metal tyre on the wooden wheel.