HISTORY: A Settle farrier at work in the early years of the last century

THIS week’s picture is another from the recently unearthed batch found in a Craven Herald filing cabinet. Evocative of a bygone age it may be, but as with last week’s photograph there is almost no information to go on - except for the word ‘Settle! on the back. Presumably, therefore, this is a town blacksmith or farrier shoeing a horse, and judging from the clothing, in the early decades of the last century - a time before widespread mechanised transport and farm machinery, when the blacksmith and the farrier were central to keeping the country on the move. Then, virtually every town and village had a forge - and there are still quite a few around today, of course, though most seem to concentrate on fancy metalworking rather than horsehoes. There is still a need for horses to be shoed, especially in the Yorkshire Dales, but most farriers nowadays go to the horse rather than the horse going to them!