0589.  Martin Sunderland Stead the blacksmith at his anvil, from Illustrated Leicester Chronicle 9 October 1937 page 5.

Museum Pieces At Village Smithy

Do you know how the Devil became cloven-hoofed? There is a traditional story which relates that Satan was wielding an adze, which he found difficult to employ, when the tool slipped. According to the legend the divided hooves were the result of the accident.

Mr Martin S Stead, the Harby blacksmith, told me that this tale of the archfiend's clumsiness in exercising the cutting tool, which has an arched blade at right angles to the handle, was often narrated by his father, a wheelwright. Mr. Stead possesses an old document which shows that for two centuries the music of the Harby anvil was produced by members of the Kemp family. These smiths are progenitors of Mrs. Stead. Examining the Harby parish register for particulars of the Kemps, Mr. Stead found that it begins abruptly at 1700. It is said that a clerk used the earlier records to make a shroud for his wife, there being an old superstition that parchment would ward off evil spirits.

The Man From Alaska

Eighty years ago the Kemps sold the business, but 50 years later a member of the family, returning from Alaska, where he had made good as a fur trader and trapper, purchased it, and since then there has been no change of ownership. The present smithy is 80 years old. Its predecessor had a roof of thorns. Imprinted on the door of this vanished blacksmith's shop was a variety of initials, according to the manuscript, dated 1850, in the possession of Mr. Stead. In order to determine whether branding-irons made at the smithy would produce clear, well-shaped letters, the craftsmen applied the instruments to the door. The faded handwriting on stained paper of T. Kemp, of Harby, who states " I have seen seventy-four Christmas days," provides the information that James Kemp, born at Hose in 1672, was apprenticed to a smith at Harby. Serving his master seven years, he went to Southwell when out of his time to acquire skill in making chains and gear for ploughing. " Horses draw'd all in ropes at that time," the chronicler explains, and he describes how James Kemp returned to Harby and was the first smith in Leicestershire to produce the improved ploughing equipment, prospering by its production. The chronicler himself was at work " betimes in the morning and late at night." "We often had twenty pair of plow irons to be done by six o'clock in the morning," he recalls in the manuscript.

Harking Back

Mr. Stead can hark back to the days when work began at the forge at six in the morning; when iron hoops for children were made by smiths ; when the gruesome docking shears were employed in cutting short a foal's tail; and he can give a harrowing description of the application to the stump of the tail of a red hot iron and resin. A century-old pair of docking-shears, long disused, is among the museum pieces at the Harby forge. There is also to be seen a twitch — a cord twisted by a stick, fastened to the upper lip of a refractory horse for controlling it — which is twice as old as the former relic. Among the interesting collection of horse-shoes at the smithy is one of great antiquity, discovered during the reconstruction of the Fosse way. Corroded handmade nails were found with the shoe. Another shoe bears the initials of a young man who left Harby some years ago to settle in Canada. If he should ever return, to his native village, the memento will be presented to him.

Artistic Ironwork

Mr. Stead displayed an attractively fashioned trivet of his own making. He has exhibited similar small pieces of ironwork at the Royal Show and various exhibitions. To-day, of course, the clang of the anvil is heard less frequently than in 1891, when Mr. Stead commenced his apprenticeship at Long Clawson, and rural community councils and similar organisations are providing the incentive for the making by smiths of articles useful and ornamental in the home. An intriguing feature of the smithy is the variety of ingenious uses for the horns of cattle. A cow's horn serves as a receptacle for water in which tools are slaked; another has been fixed to the handle of the bellows, as a grip. Mr. Stead smilingly informed me that during his thirty years as a blacksmith he had worn out three such grips.

D. W. G.

 Barbara Stead collection.