The Blacksmith'S Shop

THE BLACKSMITH'S SHOP, TODENHAM

A blacksmith's forge dating originally from circa 1757, extended in the mid-late nineteenth century.

The building is constructed from red brick laid in an irregular, mainly stretcher bond, with later brick used for the western end and the upper courses across the building. It is set under a Welsh slate roof.

The forge is a single-depth, linear range, positioned against the high retaining wall of the churchyard to its rear. The main elevation comprises three unequal bays. The left bay contains double plank and ledged doors under a timber lintel. The long central bay has two windows under timber lintels: a wide timber casement with six narrow upright lights, and a smaller pegged timber six-pane fixed light with mesh glazing. The separate store to the right has a narrow plank door dating from the later nineteenth century. The gable end is blind. A plain square brick stack stands at the eastern end of the long central bay. To the rear, the building rises only approximately 30 centimetres above the height of the retaining wall to the churchyard.

Internally, the building is divided into three unequal rooms, each running the depth of the structure. The left-hand room, probably the nineteenth-century shoeing room, has traces of a terracotta tiled floor beneath later debris and an inserted timber ceiling across one end to provide storage. A wide doorway, perhaps the original entrance, leads into the forge, which has a furnace at either end with raking chimney breasts in brick. A timber bench is fixed under the window and the room is open to the roof. The third room is a store, accessed only from outside. The roof is a simple structure of narrow section timbers formed from paired common rafters with single purlins, dating from the later nineteenth century and extending across the entire building. Several independent timbers stretch across the central room, resting on the wall tops, to allow machinery and tools to hang. The walls are spiked with narrow metal bars protruding from the mortar in the brickwork, to allow tools and forged items to hang.

The village of Todenham is recorded from as early as the ninth century. Documentary records mention smiths working in the village from the thirteenth century to the late twentieth century, with a forge recorded in the sixteenth century. However, the current building marks the site where a new forge was built at Homestall End in 1757. This earliest phase consisted of a low single-storey one-bay building with a separate narrow bay at the east end and a single furnace. The building was extended westwards after 1840, and the roof was raised at a later stage, resulting in replacement of the roof structure. A second furnace was added at the east end at this time, and the chimney of the earlier furnace was removed. The tithe map of 1840 describes the building as a Blacksmith's Shop. Historical directories record George King as the smith in 1856, and Harry Gilson in 1897 and 1914. The Gilson family remained the village blacksmiths until the forge closed in 1964, remaining unaltered since that date.