Blacksmithing was once at the heart of every village community and clearly lies very close to the heart of Hector Cole, member of the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths and recently appointed MBE for services to heritage crafts. He took the village blacksmith’s shop as the central theme of this lecture and spun a series of tales of forges old and new and relayed his own personal experience of smithing from childhood to the present – one of his early memories was being dragged back across the road to school from working the bellows in his family’s blacksmithing shop.

He explained the basic tools of the trade – hammer, tongues and anvil – and went on to elaborate on the development of the anvil from the use of elm tree trunks to the “modern” form of anvil, which has existed for some centuries. This discussion was accompanied by a number of illustrations, again from ancient to modern, and Mr Cole expounded his wide-reaching knowledge and demonstrated his acute attention to detail e.g. “did you notice that sickle was left-handed” and "that medieval drawing shows a woman blacksmith”.

He then went on to describe the different sources of iron and how they can be processed to produce a form suitable for smithing. He explained that the original blacksmiths of antiquity had worked meteor iron. A feat he had been privileged to try and replicate when he had been asked to convert a piece of meteor found in Nantan, China into a knife for cutting a wedding cake. A similar knife was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb – then a great rarity and costly item which was found close to the boy king’s body. Mr Cole then went on to discuss the typical range of work a village blacksmith would have done and he passed round a number of examples: a medieval horse-shoe (what everyone automatically thinks of in association with a blacksmith), a left-handed sickle, a roman candlestick and a nail from the middle ages (what a medieval blacksmith actually made the most of). This also included examples of billhooks and an explanation of the regional differences in form and construction.

However, Hector Cole is predominately renowned for his work reconstructing the methods and products of historical blacksmiths and during this lecture he referenced his experiences smithing medieval arrow-heads, working on the Queen’s collection of ancient armour and forging Saxon swords. He passionately detailed and illustrated this work, from pattern-welded swords to Woodstock’s own role in the medieval forged iron armoury trade. He also referenced many of the exhibits in the Oxfordshire Museum and particularly the collection assembled for the free “Forged in Fire: Oxfordshire Metal Through Time” Exhibition which runs until 5th July 2015.

The lecture was simply presented and at times Mr Cole digressed from his central theme with stories from his own wide-ranging smithing experience but this was always to the fascination of the audience and always gave great insight and information about being a blacksmith, ancient and modern. This was evident from the slight reverence and awe with which the audience handled the objects Mr Cole casually passed round, and their keen questioning of him at the end of the lecture. During the talk Mr Cole briefly referenced the association between blacksmiths and magic – Weyland’s Smithy – but he did not elaborate much upon this. However, this lecture proved an insight into Mr Cole’s magic and with his all-encompassing knowledge of blacksmithing presented in an uncomplicated and charming manner, clearly delighted and informed the audience.