Victorian Blacksmithing – inspired by Gertrude Jekyll

Our volunteers are always encouraged to develop their interests in the old ways of village life and the many crafts that go along with them. In our Victorian blacksmith’s forge, one of our volunteers, Chris, has recently been working on a project inspired after he had been researching a book published in 1904 by the renowned garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932).

Although best known for her horticultural prowess when working with famous arts-and-crafts architect Edwin Lutyens, Jekyll was passionate about preserving what she saw as the disappearing ways of country life. In her book, ‘Old West Surrey’, Jekyll states ‘So many and so great have been the changes within the last half-century, that I have thought it desirable to note, while it may yet be done, what I can remember of the ways and lives and habitations of the older people of the working class of the country I have lived in’. Clearly, she had been doing her own research by visiting, photographing and documenting material for her book over several years. So we can be sure that the items she depicts are at least Victorian, and in many cases could be centuries older, at least in design.

When Chris discovered the range and number of photographs of ironwork items made by village blacksmiths and depicted in the book, he challenged himself to try and recreate some of them in the Museum’s Victorian forge, using traditional tools and methods.

When recreating many of these items, all Chris generally had to go on was a small, rather grainy black-and-white photo of the piece. But occasionally, Jekyll gives an invaluable nugget of information; for example, next to the illustration of the ‘candlestick with jointed arm’, she remarks that ‘the one shown draws out to a length of two feet ten inches’. This helped Chris make the replica to (almost!) exactly the same size as it would have been.

Unsurprisingly, many of the items depicted have their place in or around the hearth, where tending the fire, cooking and socialising took place.

 

 

So far, Chris has reproduced three very different kinds of candle-holder, shown here in comparison to Gertrude Jekyll’s photographs. Candle holders could take on a multitude of forms, from those that sat on a table often fixed in a wooden base, to those fixed to walls (called sconces) and larger ones on floor-mounted stands.

The sconce pictured right, which Chris reproduced, is typically plain and functional, made from a single piece of iron bar, and neatly fixed to the wall by nail spikes fashioned from the bar itself. The expense of decoration of such objects could rarely be afforded on a typical worker’s wage.

Fireside trivets, such as the one on the right which has been reproduced by Chris, were common on which to support heavy pans or kettles near the fire to keep them hot, so needed to be stable to avoid overturning.

 

Blacksmithing itself dates back to when humankind first learned how to extract iron from ore. The Victorian blacksmith continued the craft handed down through generations, and became a central character in almost every village and town, making to order anything that people needed for everyday life.

When visitors come to our forge at the Museum, they are transported back to that time, when even the humble carpentry nail was hand-made, candles were still the most common form of lighting, and families gathered on cold winter evenings around the pot by the open fire.