Our latest project, to find any trace of a village smithy that's at least 200 years old has just begun. Even though it was only demolished in the 1970s, little is known about the building or the people who worked there.
Through our initial desk-based research, we've been able to locate the building on maps going back as far as the start of the 1800s and by overlaying these on satellite images, to ascertain its position. Despite extensive changes to roads, buildings and boundaries over the last fifty years, we're reasonably confident that we have the right spot!
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| Any trace of the building is somewhere under the metre-deep bank in the middle of this photograph! |
Soon after we begun putting in some exploratory trenches, a nearby resident kindly gave us a copy of a photo taken in the late 1960s. This shows two lost buildings, a cottage in the foreground and behind that a part of the old smithy itself. As can be seen in the above photograph, the area is much more wooded today.
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| A zoomed-in segment from a 1960s photograph shows the smithy building, partially obscured by a cottage, at left. |
The indications from our initial digging is positive, with several clusters of house-bricks lying in the anticipated position of the building.
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