The Manwan Smith Anvil Trust are advertising a historic smithy to let, and are seeking a suitable blacksmith to take up residency there.
The National Heritage Ironwork Group writes:
The Trustees of the Anvil Trust in Mawnan Smith near Falmouth in Cornwall have recently overseen the restoration of village smithy and are now looking for a suitable blacksmith.
In 1851 there were four working smithies serving nineteen farms in the parish, but fifty years later only one remained. For over a hundred years the smithy, operated by blacksmith Billy James and followed by his son Dryden, was the centre of village life until, on Dryden’s death in 1994, the smithy doors were closed and the building and its contents went into hibernation. Then in 2002 the owner of the smithy and the Parish created a project which brought about the restoration of the premises to its former glory and made the anvil ring once more, hence the formation of the Mawnan Anvil Trust
