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Blacksmiths shop, Meeting Street, Quorn, 1935
On Saturday 17th August 1935, The Illustrated Leicester Chronicle published this photograph and an article about village blacksmiths in days gone by.
The picture was captioned ‘A blacksmith at the anvil in Mr Holmes’ smithy at Quorn’.
The article continued:
‘The other day I paid a visit to Mr T Holmes’ smithy at Quorn, and here I found a very old fashioned place that has been in the Holmes family for over a hundred years. This is a typical old English smithy, with no windows, the old blower, and the rows of iron bars stretched across the roof. Old horse shoes and scrap iron decorate the outside of the shop. This is indeed one of the last of the really old smithies left in this part of the country.
Mr Holmes was away, but Mrs Holmes told me that “things had changed”. Years ago Mr Homes had a full-time job shoeing horses, but today, apart from the Quorn Hunt, Mr Holmes has a very slack time. The Hunt is his best customer and only last week he shod over a hundred horses that are due to be used during the season for hunting. Mr Holmes has carried out this duty for many years and it is pleasing to see that such things as this are helping to keep the village smithy in existence.’
The blacksmith in the photograph is Tom Holmes' assistant, Thomas Broom from Farnham Street. One of Thomas Broom's granddaughters remembers her grandpa saying that he often had to walk from Quorn to the Quorn Hunt kennels on Paudy Lane, Barrow upon Soar, to shoe the horses.
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Submitted on: |
2019-02-14 |
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Submitted by: |
Sue Templeman |
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Artefact ID: |
2070 |
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Artefact URL: |
www.quornmuseum.com/display.php?id=2070 |
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