This article originally appeared on The Croydon Edit.
Until the advent of the car — and even for a while after it — the blacksmith was a fixture of pretty much every town and village.
In the days when agricultural industry was booming, tools and machinery had to be crafted and maintained. Horses — used for shifting farm machinery as well as getting people from A to B — constantly needed shoes making and mending by blacksmiths and farriers. The sound of "clank, clank, clank" pierced everyday life.
Croydon was especially blacksmith/farrier heavy. In the 18th century tens of thousands of horse-pulled carriages were passing through on their way to trendy destinations like Brighton, and you can imagine that — as well as everything else that needed blacksmithing in the town — a fair few battered horseshoes and wheels were in need of servicing.
Until relatively recently there was a Blacksmith Arms on Croydon’s South End — on the site where a blacksmith previously smote his anvil overlooking the chocka London-Brighton road. In 1808, a smithy by the name of William Bignell, who worked on Croydon’s Coombe Lane, appeared in an advert for 'Lynch's Celebrated Botanic Embrocation and Vegetable Extract': "I was afflicted with an inflammatory rheumatism…" goes Bignell's endorsement, "that I could hardly crawl with crutches… till advised to try your Embrocation and Vegetable Extract, when, to the astonishment of my friends, I was so far recovered in three days, as to be able to walk without my crutches, and in a few more applications was entirely cured."
While the blacksmith was often seen as a trusted pillar of the community (I vaguely remember a League of Gentleman radio sketch in which the local blacksmith spouts sage, poetic advice) not all were good 'uns. A Croydon Times article from October 1924 described a young West Croydon blacksmith who hit, bit and kicked a local bobby (see image above). Smithies were still stirring up trouble in 1949; a Croydon Times piece from that year features another young blacksmith who police said had been a "source of trouble since he arrived in the town." I guess it's not ideal if your source of trouble happens to be armed with a red hot poker and massive great hammer.
By this time, of course, the career of the blacksmith was already sliding toward obsoleteness, and in today's Croydon, all the blacksmiths have long gone.
All, that is, except one.
While researching for my book, Croydonopolis, I visited Addington Palace for a tour, and just before I went, I discovered that not only does Addington have a palace, but a fully-functioning forge too. I decided to call in.
The humble brick building with forest green shutters is announced by a blacksmith-shaped weathervane on the roof. I knocked on the Dutch door, and the top half swung open. Ben Spicer, a friendly-faced blacksmith, invited me into the darkness beyond. Two hulking great anvils stood on the floor, and everything smelt of coal and warmth. There was a toasty nostalgia to the place; the kind of cosiness that reminds you of a grandad's shed.
I was beckoned to sit next to Jim Collins, wearing smudged blue overalls and a flat cap. It was a frigid March morning, but as I sat by the coal stove in the middle of the room, my knees started scorching under my jeans. Jim and Ben started telling me the history of Addington Forge.
A forge has been on this site since the 16th century — when John Whitgift himself hadn't even yet stepped foot in Croydon. This particular, purpose-built forge — as a green plaque outside claims — has been here since around 1740. For most of its existence, the forge was worked by the Coppin family, the last of them, Leslie Coppin, who was a blacksmith here at the turn of the 20th century.
Jim told me how his dad, Edward Collins, ran a smithy a few hundred yards up the road during the war, in the old coach houses at the Cricketers pub, employing a handful of women to lathe ammunition. While they did, Doodlebugs zipped low overhead, en route to the nearby aerodrome at Biggin Hill.
After the Second World War, Edward Collins moved his operations to Addington Forge. "He more or less pushed all the machinery on rollers down the road!" laughed Jim, as he took another drag on his roll-up, and the first shards of spring sunlight shone through the forge windows and gaps in the roof, catching here and there on pieces of scrollwork.
Jim soon started working with his dad, and later on had the business handed down to him, working with his wife Christine, who, in 1997, pointed out to the Croydon Post what an integral part of Croydon this forge was: "Even the brackets that support the hanging baskets in every corner of Croydon were made here."
Jim, then, has worked here all his life, save the couple of years he spent in Korea and Hong Kong — a chapter he remembers fondly. He rolled up a cigarette and ignited it with a utility lighter: "I've never worked for anybody," he said, "Only in the army. After that I've been self-employed."
Whether smiting horseshoes, munitions, farm machinery or gates, Addington Forge has stayed in business by being malleable enough to change with the times. Before the A2022 was built, and Addington Forge was on the main road, Jim sold Bambi-shaped garden ornaments, and made a killing from passing motorists — a memory that brought a grin to his face. Nowadays, he told me, it is largely railings, gates and fences. "I used to do weathervanes but that's all fizzled out. You can buy them cheap from garden centres now."
There is, however, a newfound appreciation for handcrafted metalwork — and that extends to those who want to create it, as well as buy it.
One day in 2010, Ben Spicer arrived at the forge out of the blue, requesting that Jim train him up to be a farrier. "He just came in the door with his mum," Jim said, "He's always been interested in this sort of thing, ironwork. And then he started and has been here ever since. Just as well because I couldn't do it on my own now."
Ben pulled out photos of Jim back in the 1970s — sharp, black and white pictures, taken by the Croydon Advertiser. "Oh, look at my hair, wow!" grinned Jim as he looked back at the photos.
It's incredible to think that a place like Addington Forge is still going against all the odds, and heartening to think it could continue for many years to come.
Though Addington Forge doesn’t do open days (not as far as I know anyway), it is very much open for business.
Croydonopolis: A Journey to the Greatest City That Never Was by Will Noble, published by Safe Haven — now available in paperback.
