The Horse in the Furrow

by George Ewart Evans

  ‘The longest day I can remember at Needham smithy was the day of the Stowmarket Christmas sale—I forget the exact year. But up to then it had been a right mild winter. None o’ the farmers had thought about having their horses roughed,2 and they set off extra early that morning to go to the Christmas market. I cycled over from Creeting at the usual time and when I started it were all right. The roads were wet. But when I got half-way, I had to get off my bike: the roads had frozen and were like glass. By the time I got to the smithy there were a queue of horses half-way down the street, all waiting to be roughed. The farmers going to market had come down from Barking and Ringshall and those places, and on the rough owd country roads they managed; but as soon as they got to the tarred road in Needham street they had to stop. So they unharnessed the wagons, left them down the Barking road and brought the horses to the smithy.

  ‘As you know there are two kinds of roughing: you can either put frost-nails in the shoe or you can take it off and turn the heels and the toes of the shoes up—turning ’em up, we used to call it. We did a hundred and seven horses that day. We finished at ten minutes to six, about our usual time. I was just takin’ off my apron in the smithy when I says to the guv’nor:

  ‘“Was that a chain a-clinkin’ in the travus?”3

  ‘“No, there’s no horses in there now!”

  ‘“That there is! I can hear them.”

  ‘We went in and saw two of Quinton’s that been sent up to be shod. We had no shoes for ’em so my mate and I had to set to and make the shoes and shoe them. It was eight o’clock when we finished. I was so tired I had to get off my bike twice on the way up to Creeting and sit on the side of the road in the snow for a spell before I could go on. That was the sort of day you don’t forget. I could hardly look at my dinner when I got home. We’d worked from 6.30 a.m. until 8.00 p.m. with the shortest of breaks during the day. My mate was over seventy, so I couldn’t let him lift a horse’s foot after “knocking-off” time: I actually shoed the two horses. But he was laid up after that and we didn’t see him for days.

  ‘Few people can judge what shape a particular horse is in better than the smith who shoes him. The farmers knew this; and they’d often come for advice: “Owd Todd is going to sell one of his horses—Champion, d’you know him? What sort of a horse is he?” “Oh, he’s all right,” the verdict may be; “you can’t go wrong with him.” Another may come along for advice and you’d tell him to leave the horse alone: “But he looks all right! What’s the matter with him?” “Maybe he looks all right; but if you buy that horse you’ll be buying yourself a packet o’ trouble.” We lost a farm’s work through something like this; only it was my boss who was involved—and it turned out all right in the end.

  ‘The farmer’s son brought a beautiful mare to be shod; and after she’d been done he asked the guv’nor what he thought on her. He studied her and in spite of her looks he told the son: “Tell your father she’s a wrong ’un.” When the farmer heard this judgment he was very angry, storming and swearing and saying there was nothing wrong with the mare. He refused to send his horses to be shod at our smithy after that; for once the smith’s verdict got around it would be difficult for him to sell the mare. But six month’s later that same mare developed some complaint in her front legs. She became a cripple, and I don’t know what became of her. The farmer came back to our smithy after that, bringing a couple of his horses. “You were right,” he admitted, “but I was whoolly riled when I heard what you thought on her.”

  ‘The foot on a horse is the most important part of him, you can say; and the blacksmith can help a lot in putting any defects in the feet right. Some colts used to have what is called steeple-hoof. It’s a condition where the toe of the hoof wears out quicker than the rest of it, causing the hoof to be tilted forward. If it’s not corrected right quick it leads to deformity in the front legs. If a stallion is a bit inclined that way he can pass on the defect to his stock. I used to go over to Battisford once, specially to tip—put special shoes on—six colts, all with steeple-hoofs. I tipped ’em for a twelve-month and they came all right afterwards. You had to be very particular about the frog:4 it had to be looked at very carefully, because canker-foot would easily set in if the frog became infected. Some blacksmiths used to trim the frog each time the horse came in to the smithy; but when we were in the army we daren’t touch the frog. We had to shoe a horse with frog-pressure, as they called it. That meant the shoe had to be on a level with the frog, so when the foot was set down the frog would be making contact with the ground. They said it was a kind of cushion to absorb the shock and it should be allowed to do its job properly. You daren’t touch the frog in the army—if you were caught trimming up a frog it meant “fourteen days”.5

  ‘I used to prepare a lot of horses for shows when I was at the stud-farm at Henley—Shires they had there—and you probably won’t believe me when I say that the blacksmith has won half the prizes for these show horses. A good blacksmith will correct a defect in a horse’s foot so it would take a master of a judge to find it out. If, for instance, a horse was “wide behind”—that means his hocks were too far apart—a good blacksmith could help to do something about that by making his shoes thick on the outside of the heel and thin inside. He’d look a bit better then, when the judge walked round the back to have a look at him. Special bevelled shoes was the rule for farm-horses that were being shown—they made the feet look bigger. Then there was another trick. While the horse was in the box or the meadow preparing for the show, we shod him with thin grass-plates; but the day before the show we changed these for the heavy, bevelled shoes. When the horse got into the ring he was unused to the heavy shoes and he picked up his feet with an exaggerated lift that improved his “action”. Looking after the feet is one of the arts of showing a heavy horse. It’s easy to get a good body with plenty of fat on a horse; but it’s hard to keep the legs and the feet just right at the same time. The art is in keeping the right balance. I’ve seen a horse perfect on top and yet they’d been a-putting soft-soap into the cracks of the hoofs to try and fool the judges. Besides, the feet are critical in another way: if you feed a horse up too much he is likely to get fever of the feet. The hoof goes soft, and it’s as good as all over with that horse’s showing days.’

  In addition to shoeing horses and doing various repair jobs, one regular task at the smithy was the re-tyring of cart wheels. In the summer the woodwork in the farm cart or wagon wheels tended to shrink; and the iron tyres often worked loose. The wheels then needed the smith’s attention.

  ‘When this happened some farmers used to say: “I can’t afford to hev the wheels done,” and they’d stand the cart or the wagon in a pond until the felloes of the wheel swelled up. The wheels would be all right for a couple of days; then they’d become ten times worse and they’d have to come to the smithy. We took off the iron tyres, and cut out a small piece off each one and then welded the ends back together. Then we fitted each tyre back onto the wheel which was clamped down on the tyring platform. This was a circular steel plate, level with the ground, fixed permanently in the lane outside the travus. But first we had to heat up the tyre in the oven we’d built on purpose to do this. The oven was made of sheets of iron, in sections; and you could fit it or pin it together and dismantle it after use. It was circular in shape and we could fit it up to take any number of wheels—three or four pairs if need be. To heat the oven we placed shavings and wood in between and around the tyres which usually took about an hour to heat sufficiently. To get the tyres out of the oven two of us would have a long rod each. We’d marked every tyre, but sometimes we’d fish the wrong one out; then there’d be some swearing.

  ‘The reason the tyres were heated was this: when we cut out the piece of the loose tyre and welded it together it was then smaller than the actual woodwork on the wheel. How much smaller we had to estimate before cutting the tyre in the first place. If it was a newish wheel and the joints between the felloes had a fair gap we’d give her perhaps ⅞ of
an inch; if the joints were not very loose we’d give her perhaps ½ an inch. That meant the tyre would be that amount smaller than the actual wheel, so we had to heat up the tyre to expand it in order to get it on to the rim. Then, when the heated tyre gradually cooled, it contracted and drew the joints together and bedded itself firmly round the woodwork. There was a central spindle on the tyring platform, and the wheel was put over this and clamped down so that it wouldn’t spring. Three men were needed to do the actual fitting of the tyre: two holding the tyre after they had taken it out of the oven, and one with a bucket of water to pour onto the felloes to stop them from taking fire as the tyre was clamped on. If it had been properly heated it would slip on without any trouble. But if the tyre had not been expanded enough, we’d have to have levers and gently lever and hammer it on, something in the same way as you’d do with a bicycle tyre. But if you hammered you had to be careful to miss the joints: the felloes were dowelled together and if you hit one of the joints the wrong way, the dowel was certain to break. The owd guv’nor was a knowing one with these tyring jobs. He weren’t very brisk in the morning, and often we were a bit late getting off the mark ourselves; but he didn’t mind us working beyond six in the evening—we didn’t get paid for that! He’d say about four: “We’ll fire the oven.” It would take about an hour and a half to fix and heat up the oven; and, of course, once it was started we had to carry on with the job of re-tyring. I’ve known him more than once take out his watch half-way through a tyring job and say as though he was some bit surprised:

  ‘“It’s six o’clock! Wheriver has the day gone!”

  ‘This particular blacksmith had a secret process for hardening mill-bills, the tool used for trimming or dressing a mill-stone, cutting out the “furrows” on the stone and making them well-defined in order to grind the corn more efficiently. It was difficult to hammer out the steel of these mill-bills, but the hardening process was more difficult still. Cold steel could not be heated more than blood-hot, that is beyond the point when it was a red of the same colour as blood. If it were heated more than this it would become all brittle; and great care had to be taken not to heat up the end of the bill—the cutting part—too much. If you were making a new bill you’d hammer it out and then you’d let it get cool. To harden it you then put about an inch of the first end into the fire, taking care it wouldn’t get too hot. Then you’d take it out of the forge and dip it into a tub containing a special mixture; then you watched it change colour as you held it, watched it very carefully. It changed from white to strawberry then to violet. When it was violet it was the right temperature to dip into the tub a second time. When you had done this the first end was complete. To harden the other end you followed the same process; only when the second end of the bill went into the forge you had to have a ladle and pour water over the first end to stop it heating up again.

  ‘There were sometimes as many as fifty dozen mill-bills in the smithy at the same time—many of them being re-sharpened, for the ends got blobbed after they’d been in use for some time. They were sent here from all over the country. A lot came from Leeds to be re-pointed. Day was one of the few men who knew the secret properly: I believe there was a man in Ipswich as well. The main part of the secret was the mixture in the tub: it was like vitriol to look at but no one knew what was in it exactly. Another secret he had was the joining of two old bills together to make a new one. He had a secret way of doing this and the customer couldn’t tell that the new bill was two old ones dowelled together. Making or re-pointing mill-bills was gruelling work. You couldn’t heat the steel until it was soft, so you had to hammer it while it was almost hard. They’d have mechanised hammers to the job today. After a day at this work your shoulders and arms would be all bruises. It shook you up so much; jarred your arms and your shoulders, so next day you could hardly raise your arm high enough to put your cap on.’

  But it wasn’t all work at the smithy. They used to have an occasional break; and even the most unlikely incident was seized upon to make some diversion in the monotony of the work.

  ‘After bending over a horse or a job on the anvil till all your body ached you were glad of any bit of fun for a couple o’ minutes to take your mind off the job. I allus remember the owd boy from Creeting College (farm) and the fly. There was a big owd fly settled on the smithy door; and this owd boy took off his hat and was just a-goin’ to swipe this fly off the door. But the guv’nor dropped his hammer and said some serious: “Don’t do that! Don’t kill that fly. That’s our pal. That’s our pal!” And the poor owd boy put his hat back on sheepish like and watched the fly zooming about the smithy, giving us a look as the same time. We often used to laugh about the owd boy and the fly.’

  Some of the boys who had just left school used to be mischieful when they brought the farm-horses in, but the smith had a few tricks to put them in their place. ‘One of the things he did was this: On the quiet he’d heat up the ends of two thin iron rods. Then he’d ask one of the boys: “Can you play the kittle-drum on the anvil like this? Sounds good don’t it?” After showing the boy how it was done, he’d offer him the two iron rods—the hot ends towards him. The boy would drop them immediately. Then the smith said innocently:

  ‘“Well, that’s a rum ’un. I can hold ’em quite well. Or maybe, the other ends got hot while I was a-tapping them on the anvil.”

  ‘“You hold the other end and see,” the boy usually said, a bit angry. But the laugh was on him, and he’d be on his way to finding his proper place in the smithy—which was to stand by and watch, and not ask too many questions.’

  If this treatment was not effective the blacksmith sometimes tried another trick. With a piece of chalk he mark a short vertical line on the anvil. Then with his small hammer in his right hand he placed his left fore-finger on the chalk-mark with a great show of concentration. Then he began tapping rhythmically each side of the mark with his hammer, at the same time moving his fore-finger deftly out of the way. After he had done this long enough to make it look deceptively simple, he asked the boy: ‘Would you like to have a go?’ The boy took up the hammer and at first very slowly tapped the anvil, taking great care to keep his fingers out of the way. Then after a bit of encouragement from the smith: ‘That’s right. You got the idea some quick!’ he forgot his initial caution and began to quicken up his tapping. In a moment or two he dropped his hammer with a clatter and was walking about the smithy holding his fore-finger under his armpit.

  A colt that was shod for the first time always provided a diversion; sometimes a not very welcome one. For most colts resented being shod and as a result the smith would be thrown about the travus before he had finished. But it was a long-standing custom in Suffolk that at a horse’s first shoeing the farmer should pay for beer to be given to the smith and his helpers. The custom was probably a recognition of the special difficulty of introducing a young colt to the idea of having iron shoes hammered on to his hoofs.

  ‘We used to call it First Nail—a shilling extra on the price for shoeing a colt for the first time, a shilling for the men as beer-money. As soon as the smith started on the colt his mates used to say: “This is the beer-nail. This is the beer. If you bend it, mind, you git no beer!” When the colt was shod we sent out for the beer and put our coats on and sat round with the farmer’s man and drank it. Some farmers used to try and get out of paying First Nail. But if they didn’t pay up, we got it out of ’em in another way—by putting an extra shilling on one of their bills. Some weeks we’d have as many as ten or twelve colts coming in. One farmer used to bring three colts at a time. That was too many. For with a young colt you’d git flung about middling sharp—and with some on ’em you arned your beer-money. Though a smith allus has a spark in his throat and cin drink a pint o’ beer at any time.’

  This ceremony of First Nail was usual in the blacksmith’s shops in this district; and on it the very old custom of Shoeing the Colt at harvest time would appear to have been founded. This was a kind of primitive initiation ceremo
ny of a newcomer into the harvest-field. Charles Bugg of Barking has described it:

  ‘Your first harvest and the first field you went into when you were a boy the men took you and turned you up and drove a nail into the bottom of your shoe. They would go on driving in the nail until you shouted: “Beer!” When you shouted beer they stopped hammering the nail because it meant that you’d agreed to buy each man a pint o’ beer out of your first harvest money. If a boy wouldn’t shout, they drove the nail right in until it reached his foot, and then he’d pretty soon sing out.6 There used to be a lot of clubbing up and beer-drinking when I were a lad. Then there was some bother on this particular farm—some fooling about and one on ’em put a fork through a cow’s bag. That was the end of that: no clubbing after that.’

  Allen Cobbold (born 1904), the other blacksmith mentioned, lives at Battisford, near Stowmarket. His grandfather and his father were blacksmiths at the same forge near Battisford Straight; and the tools he uses for the shoeing of a horse are the same as those his grandfather used. ‘A hammer, a pair o’ nippers, a rasp and an unclencher—for taking off the old shoe—is all you want for shoeing.’ He still used the old fashioned pear-shaped bellows in his smithy. But in most other respects the picture has completely changed. In the first place the blacksmith no longer makes his own shoes, welding them from the old ones, as already described. He now buys machine-made shoes from an iron-merchant in the nearby town. A traveller comes round to the smithy ‘about once in three months’ and he gives an order for the shoes he requires.

  ‘I used to buy my shoes by the ton, but now I buy them by the hundredweight. That will give you some idea of the position today. Six or seven years ago I had about hundred and fifty farm-horses to shoe: now I’ve got not many more than a score—and this score is taken from a much wider area than before: a blacksmith packs up and I take his district over. As I see it, what is happening now is that as soon as a horse on the farm dies he is not being replaced. There are only a handful of horses left in the farms round here; and with these they don’t go on like they used to. The horses are baited at seven o’clock when the men go to work: they don’t have a horsemen specially to bait ’em. Another thing has changed: the price of having a horse shod. When I started work, shoeing a horse cost two shillings. Today you couldn’t do it for less than thirty.’