Talking Smiths Part 1 Sample

Description

George Roberts is about to retire after 60 years as a Master Blacksmith.

Both discuss their life’s work, George father and his two bothers‘ were blacksmiths, the bothers in Birmingham.

We start our interview at George Robert’s Blacksmith forge in Llanfairfechan. A family business going back three generations, George was the youngest, the two older bothers’ all blacksmiths left home and worked in Birmingham all their working lives. Just looking at the blacksmith’s yard show’s how time has changed the pile of horseshoes, the old plough, the corn sack scales, the many old tools for putting the tires on waggon wheels. The giant hand-powered 19c J. Rhodes & Sons, Wakefield, est. 1825 is a metal cutting punch and shearing machine, still in working order, in 1990. This same firm is Group Rhodes, still in Wakefield and Worldwide today.

Moving inside the forge years of industry was on view, garden seat, ornate iron-wall fencing, a very old power hammer, rows of shelving storing tools and examples of wrought ironwork. Towards the back of the workshop was a large window, beneath this a large workbench with its Victorian leg-vice. Next to this a large anvil on a log-base,  to the right the large metal forge with an electric fan to control the heat.

Our two blacksmiths George and Dave Palmer start talking about their lifetimes work, how it was continuedly changing over George’s father lifetime and now his son George. A hundred years ago horsepower was king, there was enough work for 9-10 blacksmiths between Bangor and Llandudno. After the two World Wars, down to one Bangor ended 1970’s and the last at Llanfairfechan finished 2000’s. There are now very few working smiths, some can be seen in a few Museums around Britain today.

Finally, your cameraman Michael Robert Mumford, Director, Editor & Publisher TALKING Series of Interviews records what is so often overlooked by the media and may have been lost for all time.

Mumfordbooks © Landscape-guides 1990-2020 DVD.