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Fire and Iron
Iron can be extracted from the red oxide called haematite in any area where this mineral is found, and where enough wood is growing to feed the smelting fires; in Surrey, iron has traditionally been sent north from the Weald. The iron ore has to be broken up, washed, and laid on a fire of charcoal which is brought by the blast of air from bellows to a temperature of 1,100 degrees. This reduces the ore to a layer of slag and a spongy metal mass called bloom: this must be brought to red heat and beaten into bars before it is of any use to the smith. Iron is different from other metals. It cannot be melted in an open hearth and cast into moulds, as were copper and bronze; cast iron was not made in Europe until modern times. Instead, iron has to be beaten into shape from bars which have been softened by heating. Blacksmithing was first developed among the Hittites, a people of the Turkish mountains. The merits of iron - its malleability and strength - enabled them to build up an empire in the 15th century BC. Once these advantages were realised, the use of iron spread, and by the 8th century BC its manufacture was being promoted by the princes of Celtic Europe. The earliest smithy at Ewell dates from before the Roman conquest: its remains have been found in an excavation at Purberry Shot. Iron ore was smelted in a furnace and afterwards worked from bloom. The smith squatted by a low fire and beat out the metal on a stone block rather than an anvil, but in other respects the trade was the same as it was practised within living memory. The villages of Epsom, Cuddington and Ewell supported smiths from the earliest times. John the Smith of Cuddington was trading in land in the 1290s, and handed the business down to his son William. At Ewell another William the Smith held three acres of land scattered around the village rent free, on the understanding that he would make and repair the ironwork of the two ploughs which worked the landlord's farm. After his death the family seem to have fallen on hard times, for in 1317 his widow Alice was arrested for harbouring a thief. By 1408 Ewell had two smiths; Richard Bacheler worked behind his house on the Spring Street/ High Street corner, and another smithy in the present Glyn House grounds was being rented out. The construction of the great palace at Nonsuch in 1538 required special skills from smiths, for the work was being done by an army of labourers who needed equipping with mattocks, hammers, mason's axes, chisels and crowbars. Henry Chapman, the smith of Ewell, was employed to mend these, steeling or tempering their blades to sharpen them, and supplying new tools. He was paid by the pound of iron used, this base rate being increased when the tools were more complicated to forge. The ornamental ironwork of gates and windows, together with chains and locksmithing, was the province of a specialist - John Agilders of Hampton Wick, who must have trained on the works at Hampton Court. During the first six months of work Agilders received £50, a handsome sum and much more than any of the other contractors. At the heart of a smithy is the hearth where a fire is kept burning in a bed of coke or coal. Over the fire stands a hood which will lead smoke and fumes up the chimney, and in front of it is a water trough in which hot iron can be cooled. Behind the hearth a pair of bellows was used to blow air into the burning coal, in the days before electric fans became available. By increasing the small patch of burning coal to the right size and intensity, the smith can give his iron a range of heats from warm through cherry-red to bright yellow or snowball white. Beside the hearth, and at right angles to it, the anvil rests on a wooden block. The metal is taken out of the fire, with tongs if need be, and laid on the right part of the anvil. For heavy work, it goes onto the face, which is shod with blister steel. If the bar is to be curved or drawn out into a greater length, it is worked on the pointed bick of the anvil. When the smith wants to punch a hole in the iron, he places it over the pritchel hole at the other end. Near this is the hardie hole, which takes the shaft of bottom tools - the cutting or shaping tools which rest under the iron while it is truck from above. Most work is done with a 2lb ball-peen hammer, flat on one face and rounded on the other; but where greater force is required, the smith relies on an assistant, or striker, who can deliver a two-handed blow with a 12lb sledgehammer. For cutting metal, the smith will hold a pointed hammer called a sett, while the striker delivers the blow to it. There has been a forge off Kingston Road in Ewell for nearly three hundred years. At the beginning of this century it was run by Charlie Redditt, who worked alone until 1912 when he took on Henry Ralph from Heatherfield in Sussex as a partner. Ralph soon found himself running the forge, as Redditt spent most of his time in the nearest pub, and after a little of this the young man returned to Sussex. In 1914 he was called back by Mrs.Redditt, who explained that her husband had signed up for the army while he was drunk in the Eight Bells, and that the forge was standing empty. Henry Ralph came back and paid £100 for the business. His son and grandson followed him at the forge There was no electricity in the forge then: a gas light hung over the anvil, but this wasn't bright enough for the evenings when traders brought their horses in after work, and shoeing had to be done by candlelight. There were two forges standing back to back so that a pair of smiths could work them. There were two bellows, one of which has come to the Museum, and these were worked by hand. Eventually a fan was installed, and all the drilling which had been once done by hand was now done by machinery. All the joints in metal were originally made by firewelding, which required taking the bars up to snowball heat, sprinkling silver sand on them to stop them burning, and hammering them together rapidly before they could cool. Welding of this kind only works with wrought iron. In later years bars of mild steel were used in the smithy; in the 1950s acetylene welding became available, and finally the metal was being arc welded When a horse comes to the smithy to be shod, the farrier must make sure it is at its ease. He ties the reins onto a wooden beam with a bit of string; if the horse starts to pull, he will pull until something breaks, and it is better for the string to get broken than the reins. Then the farrier begins with a foreleg, standing where the horse can see him, and runs a hand down the leg; the horse will raise it, and the man puts it in his lap. To take off the old shoes, which are still held on by their nails, the clenched ends of the nails are struck off, and the shoe wrenched away carefully with pliers. With a paring knife, the farrier cleans dirt and overgrown hoof off the surface, being careful not to damage the muscular centre of the foot. He tests a new horseshoe for size against the hoof. If it needs any adjustment, he will let the hoof rest on a three-legged farrier's stand and work the shoe on the anvil, then return to the horse. The hot metal burns the hoof, but does not hurt the horse at all (the horn of a hoof, like our fingernails, is dead matter). Once the surface is levelled in this way it is ready for the nails. Horseshoe nails are made in a tapering shape, without separate heads, so that they wear evenly with the shoe itself. The farrier takes these and nails the shoe on, taking care that each nail passes through the horn of the hoof only and does not touch a sensitive part. The nails should protrude from the hoof about a third of the way down, where their tips can be twisted off and clenched with a movement of the hammer. Then the hoof is rasped clean and oiled, and the farrier moves on to the next. In the 1920s Ewell was surrounded by farms, all worked by horse power. The horses would come down to the Ralphs' forge to be shod - mostly Clydesdales and Suffolk Punches, but John Wallace the farmer at Priest Hill kept Shires. Mr. Stevens at Tolworth Court Farm used to breed Shires, and would bring in the colts to be shod, which was not easy, because they were strong and nervous. At the forge, Gordon Ralph was brought up as a blacksmith by his father Henry. He learned to acclimatise a colt who had never been shod, to get him used to lifting his foot, and to put the shoe on cold, not hot, because a horse is frightened by fire. He was only kicked twice in his long career: never bitten. When he started work, the rate was 3/6d for a Shire; now it would be more like £90. Before the War, tradesmens' carts were drawn by horses, usually Welsh cobs, but the only person in the village who rode a horse was the squire. After Gordon Ralph came back from the War everything had changed; the farms had sold out to building contractors and the traders had taken to using electric barrows, but there was much more riding for pleasure. In the 1960s the Riding School in Epsom Road kept fourteen riding hacks, and they came down to the forge and would queue up to be shod. After this, portable forges using butane gas came into use. Now there are five or six farriers in the district travelling out to the stables and doing the work that used to be done at the forge. The racing stables prefer their own choice of farriers: a good job can make the difference between winning or losing the race. Richard Bliss came to Ewell from Reigate in 1786 and set up in practice as a millwright and smith; his apprentice Henry Willis came from London, and after his seven years were up he married Bliss' daughter. In 1838 the two men worked together to convert the Queen Anne Inn at 9 High Street into premises with an ironmonger's shop at the front and a forge at the back. The forge was converted from a barn, and had double doors with an extra door beside to admit a cart. There was an arched opening under the forge where kegs of brandy were hidden by smugglers on the way to London, a trade which continued until the end of the Napoleonic wars. The farriers, who worked in pairs, had their own penthouse, and there was a coppersmith's hearth where pans could be tinned. Willis made stoves, ranges and other large articles. When heavy forging work was done, three strikers were employed to beat the iron, while the master smith indicated the point where they should strike. A lathe in the workshop was used to turn metal spindles and bearings for millwright's work, and the flywheel for this lathe was made out of the great hind wheel of the first stagecoach to complete the London-Brighton run. The forge had a reputation for tempering sharp tools, such as the thrifts of mill bills, pickaxes, and the hammers used to break up stones for road metalling; these were quenched in a fluid made to a special recipe (probably salty water). In time Willis took to trading in ready-made ironmongery although the forge was in use until 1925. It was demolished during the War. A smithy will have its specialised tools. The swage block is a perforated square of metal with a range of half-round and V-shaped grooves along which iron can be hammered into shape. The mandrel is a conical block used for truing up rings or hoops. Holes are made with punches, and enlarged with thicker, blunter drifts. Chisels serve to split the bar along its length, or to punch patterns in it. Much ornamental ironwork is twisted; a small bar can be twisted cold, one end being gripped in the leg-vice which stands by the smith's bench and the other held and turned in a perforated wrench. A larger bar must be brought to a uniform heat along its length - not easy when the bar is a long one - and given a twist. To make a scroll, the bar must be hammered until it tapers uniformly to an edge; then the smith takes a heat and beats the bar over the bick of the anvil until it bends into a spiral. If a scroll of fixed dimensions is required, it is better to use a scroll form. This is a template held in the hardie hole of the anvil, or in the vice. The end of the bar is worked to a hook and fixed on the form, and then the hot metal is curved round against it, being held tight by wrenches called scroll dogs. There are C scrolls and S scrolls, and double scrolls made from a bar that has been split at the end or from two bars welded together. When the end is plain, it is called a ribbon; when splayed, a fishtail; it may end in a circular knob, called a snub end; or it may be finished off into a leaf. The largest iron gates are made out of a square framework holding many vertical bars and one horizontal lock rail, which will usually be placed a third of the way up the gate. A pair of gates will be surmounted by a single overthrow, which forms a kind of arch between the piers on which the gates hang. Every detail of the design, down to the scrolls and moulded leaves which will decorate the panels, is worked out lifesize on paper and transferred as a chalk outline onto a low table, surfaced in sheet iron, which is made to be dead flat. Any irregularity in this surface and the gate will be warped. The body of the gate is made by passing the vertical bars through holes drilled in the horizontal rail and then gripping them with mortice and tenon joints into the top and bottom rails. Along the bottom third there are more verticals, called the dog bars. The upright stiles are added at the sides, and then the scrollwork is adjusted for size and fitted in. On the old gates holes were drilled in advance where the scrolls would meet the frame, and they were rivetted on; or they could be held by metal clips. Now they are welded on. To hang the gate, a knuckle is set into the pier upon which it is to be hinged, and a clip bent round the back stile is rivetted onto this knuckle, while the weight of the gate rests in an iron bearing where the foot of the back stile rotates in the ground. All gates are made slighhtly off-square, since the weight of the iron will then tend to slowly pull them into true. The grand tradition of ornamental ironwork began in the 18th century. A fashion for elaborate gates and screens had been initiated by Jean Tijou, a French refugee who came to England in 1689 and published a book of designs. There are gates made by one of Tijou's pupils at Durdans, although they were not intended for that site: made for the mansion of the Duke of Chandos at Canons, they were brought to Epsom in 1747. Afterwards the overthrow was adapted to bear the arms of Sir Gilbert Heathcote, now sorely rusted. Local smiths worked in a more austere style, without the sheet metal leaves and flourishes of the French: instead, scrolls were arranged to suggest lyres, vases, and other images from the classical repertoire. The best early gates in Epsom can be seen at Madans Walk, the pathway behind the Ladas, where they used to form a back entrance to Woodcote End House. Many big houses in the Woodcote area stand behind railings set on a dwarf wall: these railings, like the bars of gates, had to be hammered down to the right width (about an inch square) and this has given them a slight irregularity not found in modern work. The railings around the Dipping Place were set up to commemorate the battle of Waterloo; others were made to surround graves in the churchyard, until cast iron railings came in to replace those made by the blacksmith. Much ironwork - including all the tomb rails in the Borough - was requisitioned by the Ministry of Supply in 1942, and more would have been taken had not a plea for its preservation been made by Cloudesley Willis, the local historian, himself the son and the grandson of a smith.
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