Three generations saw big changes in the life of a village blacksmith
Sidlesham Forge had to adapt over the years due to mechanisation but the Stacey family retained a good reputation, including steel structures for Chichester Festival Theatre and Arundel Cathedral
It was said that if you wanted to know where anyone lived, you asked the blacksmith, and that must have been true of the Staceys, as several generations of the family served as the village blacksmith in Sidlesham.
Albert Stacey came to the village from Shaftesbury before the First World War to join James Bull at the blacksmith’s shop in Sidlesham Common. He taught his son Fred Stacey the work of the farrier and Fred’s son, Frederick William Stacey, continued the family tradition.
The Stacey family lived a few hundred yards from the forge and kept a large garden. Mr and Mrs Stacey were keen members of the horticultural society and active in the church, where Frederick played the organ for 25 years.
Poorly rewarded, the work of the farrier was hard and dirty, the hours long. Fred did not want his son to carry on in his trade and Frederick did not want to either. He was apprenticed to Jay’s Marine in East Street, Chichester, as a heating engineer and then moved to Toogood and Rawlings in Bognor Regis.
But a motorcycling accident left him with severe injuries and he was unable to work for a couple of years. Then, after a spell working for a local builder, Frederick joined his father at the forge at the age of 20. Eventually, Frederick persuaded his father they needed more space and they were able to acquire land from the Church Commissioners to build a new works to carry on the business with modern plant.
The works were extended over the years, gaining a good reputation for structural steelwork, and the site of the old forge was taken over by a bungalow.
Horses and horse-drawn tackle provided much work for the forge when Frederick was a lad and when he joined his father in the late 1920s, there were still a few horses, before their role was usurped by machinery.
Speaking to our Yesterday magazine in August 1990, Frederick said: “On a wet morning, I have seen as many as eight horses lined up waiting to be shod and
I was very proud of my father’s skill as a farrier. My father was in much demand by vets from a wide area because he knew the anatomy of horses’ legs and feet and he could make surgical shoes to correct faults. Father had a way with all animals, particularly horses.
“He started at 6.30am and sometimes went on until 9 o’clock at night. He loved his garden as well and at one stage he also had a ten-acre smallholding at Highleigh, where he bred pigs.
“Not a tall man, he was broad and powerful, yet I often wondered how he had the strength to do it all. It was dreadfully hard work.
“When shoeing, he could be holding up part of a horse which weighed threequarters of a ton.
“The pay was very poor and farmers were slow payers – some of them were hard-up, too. I remember he used to shoe four heavy horses for 7s 6d, including the shoes, and that would have taken him an hour and a half at least, and the shoes would have been made beforehand. Later on, they bought in made shoes and altered them.
“Working with these heavy and powerful animals could be dangerous. Some of them were overfed and very fractious. My father had been badly trampled before moving to Sidlesham, when he was shoeing at Thorney Island. His leg had to be wired to set and he was in hospital for a long time. He still got into the Army in World War One and worked on transport.”
The forge fire would go out within ten minutes if it was not blown. Coke was used, always put on wet. It formed big clinkers and eventually these had to be taken out and the fire rebuilt.
Frederick said: “If they were joining two pieces of metal together, the temperature had to be just beyond melting point. The iron had to be just right to be hammered together. If the smith was to wait a few seconds too long, it would run.the forge was a hot place and my grandfather used to drink a lot of beer to make up for it, though my father drank nothing but homemade wine. Initially, the forge was hand-pumped, later we used powered bellows and I had quite a job to get father to accept them.”
There were hard times in the depression of the early 1930s but as the tractor began to take over from the horse, the forge developed a sturdy line in trailers, a natural follow-on from the wooden horse-drawn carts. Eventually, as sophisticated mechanisation took over, Frederick began to concentrate on structural steelwork, expanding the business to a staff of 22.
Work was diverse, including such projects as additions to the lock gate mechanism at Chichester Yacht Basin, a sports ground stadium, steelwork for extensions to Chichester Festival Theatre, staircases at Chichester
Leisure Centre and the steel skeleton for Arundel Cathedral’s 52ft spire.
He was broad and powerful, yet I often wondered how he had the strength to do it all. It was dreadfully hard.
FREDERICK STACEY Sidlesham Forge