Memories forged at old smithy
Smoke rose from the flue rather unexpectedly above the Teddington shed, as if a ghost had returned to his workshop.
For years the blacksmith’s forge in the small Lyttelton Harbour community was neglected.
Some of its walls had been removed and it had slumped, ‘‘folded over like a cardboard box’’.
‘‘The building was in a bad way,’’ said David Bundy of the Governors Bay Heritage Trust.
It was built in the late 1880s, at the bottom of Gebbies Pass Rd.
‘‘J. Bryden has started a Blacksmith’s Shop, Head of the Bay, Teddington, where he hopes to receive a fair amount of patronage,’’ an advertisement in The Press in 1889 read.
The building was occupied by land-holder Ra Blatchford in the 1950s as an engineering base for his contracting business.
The trust took it over in about 2010, Bundy said.
They feared it would be destroyed if the land was sold.
It is the latest in a string of restorations they have tackled around Lyttelton Harbour.
‘‘We used all original materials, period iron, period framing materials, lead-head nails. ‘‘We got timber from Ohinetahi. ‘‘[Renowned Canterbury architect] Miles Warren gave us salvage from his house.’’
Bundy said the trust aimed to retain the building long-term and support the craft of blacksmithing.
The restoration was completed about five years later and has been a working smithy for just over two years.
Keen to get smoke rising from the workshop again, the trust approached retired blacksmith Les Schenkel to operate the space.
His experience in the trade exceeded 50 years, only retiring from his various Lyttelton-based welding, engineering and blacksmithing jobs after injury.
‘‘When I came in here, it was an empty shed, had just been pulled out from the ground,’’ Schenkel said.
The forge – the bay that holds red-hot coals to work iron – was in a ‘‘state of disrepair’’.
‘‘A local man fixed it up and I straightened out the base and refitted it,’’ he said.
‘‘Stuff has been given to us, the bellows for example, which are very precious.’’
Schenkel said they did ‘‘try and re-live the past’’ but he did not see his workshop as a piece of heritage.
‘‘We try and do everything as it was done back then ... we don’t drill too many holes, we punch them,’’ he said.
Tourists and locals, the ‘‘whole league of nations’’, often stop in to watch him work and hear stories, fascinated by the old practices and hard graft.
‘‘What we call blacksmithing, general blacksmithing, is going to be a lost art, without a doubt.
‘‘The artistic side is popular and a lot of people have got some nice flair, and good on them.
‘‘But the basics, the hard side of it you know, sweating over an anvil for eight or 10 hours a day, swinging a 28-pound hammer, it’s going to go.’’