The last apprentice at the forge
At nineteen, Rory Tanner is the only apprentice at a village forge that has been working since 1780. He talks hammers, hands and the waiting list.
ory Tanner has burns on both forearms and a waiting list of nine months. He is nineteen. The forge he works in was already old when Napoleon was young.
How did you start? “School sent me on a week’s placement. I was meant to go to a garage. The garage was full.”
On learning
“For the first six months I just held things. You hold the iron while he strikes, and you learn the colours. Straw, then orange, then the bright yellow where it starts to spark. That’s the whole language.”
On the future
“People want gates, hooks, fire irons, things that last. There’s more work than smiths. What there isn’t is somewhere to learn, so I’d like to teach one day.”
Before we left he made us each a hook, in about four minutes, and did not look at the clock once.
¶ Written by
Hal Denby
Field correspondent
Hal walks to most of his stories. He has covered salt roads, lighthouses, forges and the last working thatchers, usually in the rain.
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I baked from a single 1390 household book every week for a year. The bread was better than I expected, and the rules around it were stranger.
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