Thomas Pemberton – Blacksmith
The Newport History Society recently came into possession of daybooks, ledgers, correspondence and newspaper cuttings of the late Thomas Pemberton, kindly donated by his niece.
They give a fascinating insight into the life of a blacksmith in the twentieth century whose career spanned the vast changes in farming practices from horse-pulled ploughs to full mechanisation. Thomas kept pace and adapted his work from making horse shoes and mending farm machinery to more intricate and creative wrought ironwork. He even demonstrated his craft for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Shropshire and West Midlands show.
Thomas Richard Pemberton was born in 1902. His father (also named Thomas) was a blacksmith until he retired in 1926 and Thomas took over the business at Puleston Forge, Chetwynd. One of the first entries in the daybook for 1933 (the earliest existing records) show that he charged 2 shillings for making a horseshoe. He reminisced in a newspaper interview given later in life that he made his first horseshoe at the age of ten. The bulk of his work in the early days was for shoeing horses and repairs to agricultural equipment such as threshing boxes and ridge ploughs.In the 1930s he styled himself ‘Farrier and General Agricultural Smith’ and worked for local farmers as well as the Aquelate Estate and Harper Adams Agricultural college, now Harper Adams University.
By the 1940s he referred to himself on headed notepaper as ‘Farrier and Agricultural Engineer’ as he moved into more complex wrought iron work and welding larger pieces of machinery using an acetylene welder. In 1943 he overhauled an Eddison steam roller in Dorset. He was paid £30, 12shillings and 4 pence (over £1000 in today’s money) so it was well worth the trip. Back at the forge on a more mundane level he started working for Salop County Council Roads and bridges department sharpening picks and between 1946 and 1949 he sharpened 336 picks at one shilling each. He was still shoeing horses late in his career but they were racehorses and hunters more than working farm horses.
Possibly the most impressive example of his work are the gates to the Shropshire and West Midland showground in Shrewsbury. They were made in 1951 as part of a regional celebration of the Festival of Britain. The festival commemorated one hundred years since the Great Exhibition of 1851, a showcase for the best in British science and technology. As well as the famous 1951 Festival site on the South bank of the Thames in London there were celebrations and exhibitions all over the country. Thomas’s gates showed off the skill involved in making large pieces of wrought ironwork. The official opening by Lord Forester took place on 25th May 1951 with Tom present and the Newport and Market Drayton Advertiser on hand to take a photograph of them shaking hands.
In the 1960s he continued to make a variety of items ranging from a cattle grid for Aquelate Estate to ornamental wrought iron staircase for a farm in Childs Ercall and the memorial gates at Adams Grammar school. Late in his career, in 1966, he got an order from Newport (Salop) town council for garden gates at £9 per gate. His drawings and the correspondence between him and the town surveyor K A Griffiths survive in his papers. There is no record of the siting of the gates but they may still be gracing the entrances to properties today. In 1973 (after he had retired) he restored the weather vane on St Nicholas church, High street. He added feathers which were gilded by John Mansell.
In his spare time Thomas was a very keen and talented bass baritone who made forty public performances in the Winter of 1952/53. He was also involved in amateur dramatics, played the piano and was a church warden of St. Michael and All Angels church, Chetwynd and member of Chetwynd parish council.
Another aspect of his life was the fact that he was diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic when he was twenty one years of age. This would be unremarkable today but in 1923 the prognosis was not encouraging. Luckily, Tom was one of the first people in the country to be treated with insulin. In 1970 he gave a talk to the Diabetic Association of Birmingham entitled ‘My life as a diabetic for 47 years’. In 1976, when he was 74 he was interviewed by the Newport Advertiser and was pictured drinking his first ever pint of beer. Tom died in 1982 in Wrexham.