I’ve made it all – and the garden gate!

For Matt Coates, history is everything. The 24-year-old from the London Road Estate writes about history, works for the Canterbury Historic River Tours and enjoys the ancient craft of blacksmithing

Where were you born and brought up? North Somerset, in a village called Churchill, which is between Bristol and Weston-Super-Mare When and why did you first come to Canterbury? I came to Canterbury to study military history at Kent University at the end of 2009. I chose Canterbury in the first place as Kent is one of quite few universities to offer a war studies degree, and out of all of them is easily the friendliest, prettiest and most pleasant place to study. How did you become involved in blacksmithing and where did you learn it? I taught myself the craft. I became interested in the first place as my mum paid for me and my father to go on a blacksmithing taster session with the Guild of Wrought Ironwork Craftsmen of Wessex in Exeter. I enjoyed it so much I decided that, no matter what, I would become a blacksmith. I bought a huge number of instructional books and gathered the necessary tools over the course of a year. I then just practised until I could make whatever I wanted. Why is it important that this is skill is kept alive? The blacksmith’s craft will remain important as long as people want ironwork for their homes that is unique and personalised. We live in a very mass produced society and there is very little that is unique about the decorative and functional metalwork we use to decorate our homes and businesses. The blacksmith, however, can produce bespoke decorative and functional ironwork in a way that a fabricator never could. Each item is truly unique functionally and aesthetically. As long as people want that degree of individuality in the things they use to decorate their property, our craft will be important. What do you make when blacksmithing? Absolutely anything, decorative or functional. I have made small decorative things, like fire surrounds, candlesticks etc. I’ve made functional items like fire tools and holders. I’ve even made a few garden gates. I am quite good at tool-making, and have put together a few tools for engineers, the sorts of things they can’t buy off the shelf. I’ve also practised bladesmithing, and have been commissioned to make several knives for all sorts of different uses, from kitchen to hunting. No one has asked me to forge a sword yet! The weirdest thing I have been asked to forge so far is a 7ft crooked levering bar for prying paving stones out the ground. I told him it would be cheaper to buy a crowbar, but he wouldn’t listen. You also have an interest in local history. What articles have you written and why did you find these subjects interesting? So far, I have written two articles on Canterbury Historic River Tours, the business I work for. Our company has been running for 81 years now and I find it interesting to look back and see how the business has changed and grown over the years. Seeing photos of the river from 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago really brings home how little things have changed. Of all history, what do you find the most interesting and why? Out of all the things I have studied so far, I find the Falklands War the most interesting historical subject to study. It was the subject on which I wrote my dissertation. It is a unique example of a modern conflict between two developed nations. It is also relatively recent, meaning that works produced covering it are from a fresh perspective, and there is lots of room for revision. Great for a historian to get to grips with. You’ve also got a 1960 Morris Minor? Where did you get hold of that and is it hard to maintain? My Moggy used to belong to my grandfather. He bought it as an MOT failure in the 1980s. He restored it and drove it until it died. My father then restored it in turn, and sold it to someone who took it all the way to the Lake District in Cumbria. It was pottered about in until it rusted out, parked next to Lake Windermere. It was then sold to someone who lived in Bristol, close to where I am from. One day, now after my grandfather had passed away, dad was looking for a new project car. He found a Minor listed in the paper as “spares or repair”. He went to look it at and it turned out to be his dad’s old car come home! He figured this was fate, so bought it back and restored it a third time. I was given the car for my 18th birthday, and have lovingly cared for it ever since. My Dad was the best teacher a boy could have, and taught me all I needed to know about cars. Are the changes Canterbury is going through for the better? I feel as though to a large extent Canterbury will look after itself. Our city is very much a community and with no shortage of people who care about it, I think that changes going on in our city are likely to end up as progress. What do you think of the city council’s decision to shut three of its museums for six months a year in an effort to save money? As I work in tourism, I see the huge variation in visitor numbers that we see between the busy parts of the tourism season and the offmonths after September. I think that closing the museums for the off season is not necessarily the worst thing they could be doing to save money. After all, there are so few visitors in the off-season, that it is probably not that economical to keep them open anyway. However, I am also acutely aware of the difficulties people who work in tourism face through quiet parts of the trading season; I feel bad for those who will be out of a job through the closure of the museums!