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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.

        News 1965 6 mins

        From the collection of:

        Logo for Media Archive for Central England

        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.