It’s 30 years ago this year that Stuart Carter joined the family business at West Pinchbeck.
He was continuing a tradition that goes back to his grandfather and beyond, to a time when nearly every village had a blacksmith’s shop.
Stuart joined his father Leslie and grandfather Cyril straight from school, at a time when the forge in Blacksmith’s Row was still occasionally fired up, although horse shoeing hadn’t happened for some years.
Only a year later, Cyril featured in these newspapers because he had been at the smithy for 50 years.
His daughter, Leslie’s sister Joan Clarke, remembers the work her dad would be involved in in the early days.
Joan says: “These are the jobs my father had to do to make a living. Cycle repairs, he used to put bearings in old fashioned mangles, he used to put accumulators in radios, horse shoeing and general blacksmith work.
“The blacksmithing hasn’t really stopped, but you have to do something else to make a living. My dad was 70 when he stopped and he was 89 when he died.”
Cyril had learned his trade at Lammin’s at Surfleet when he left school aged 12, Joan believes.
While he was at Surfleet, Cyril met and married Clara. As well as working at Lammin’s, Joan says her dad would do bicycle repairs. She says: “There were bikes everywhere and people would have punctures.”
Cyril and Clara moved in 1933 to West Pinchbeck to what was already an established blacksmith’s shop, and re-named it C Carter & Son, a name that has stuck.
Joan (78) remembers her mum would go out to the forge and “call strike” to help Cyril, tapping the iron with a hammer to tell him when to make the next strike.
She also recalls gypsies coming to her father to get their ponies and horses shod – and says she remembers tramps coming begging too.
She says at that time there were blacksmith shops in Gosberton Clough, Gosberton Risegate, Gosberton, Surfleet, Pode Hole, Spalding Common and Pinchbeck.
Joan says: “They were everywhere and there were sometimes two in one village. It’s like the pubs were in every village.”
In fact, the house where Joan lives opposite the blacksmith’s shop was once a pub, the Rose and Crown, and there were two other pubs nearby.
Leslie joined his father in the smithy straight from school, and is still working there every day although he is aged 79.
Now, the business is involved mainly in selling spare parts and second hand agricultural machinery, with every imaginable tool – many from Cyril’s day – to hand to carry out any repairs that might be necessary.