Agricultural History Review, Volume 64 Part 2 (2016), pp. 196–225

The transition of edge tool making from a workshop to a factory industry is normally associated with the great metallurgical centres of Sheffield and the west midlands. It is assumed rather than proven that in southern England the old industry disappeared during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, snuffed out by northern and midland competition. The paper proposes a different sequence of events. It contends, first, that in the early Industrial Revolution the pace was set, technologically, not in the great historic centres, but in south-west England, where water-powered hammers were first applied in the 1740s to the forging of large-surfaced items, such as scythes, spades and plantation hoes. And second that, whereas elsewhere in England – apart from Sheffield – hand-forging was in decline and by 1880 had largely ceased, in Kent and Sussex it underwent a revival. Located in country blacksmiths’ shops, the last edge tool forge closed about 1970, about the same time as the last water-powered forge, in the Black Country. 

Complete Volume PDF