The Media Archive for Central England is the public screen archive for the East and West Midlands. An independent charity and company based at the University of Lincoln, MACE acquires, catalogues, preserves and makes widely available moving image materials that inform our understanding of the diverse cultures and histories of communities between the Lincolnshire coast and the Welsh border.
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Belbroughton Forge
From the "jungle swamps of Vietnam" to the "sweet smelling hedgerows of our country lanes": the keen edge of a blade tempered by the craftsmen of Belbroughton.
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Overview
The local craft speciality at Belbroughton in Worcestershire was the scythes and blades favoured by generations of farmers. Originally the mills in the town were powered by water running off the nearby Clent Hills but by the time Lionel Hampden visited for ATV Today in 1965 electricity was the power source. What hadn't changed though was the reliance on the expert eye and skills of the workers themselves in producing a blade that would last a lifetime.
Scythe making took place in Belbroughton for around 400 hundred years but was considerably modernised by the Dudley trained industrialist Isaac Nash in the late nineteenth century. The final mill in the village closed in 1968.
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