Newspaper Article – Blacksmith Still Part of HB Scene

BLACKSMITH STILL PART OF HB SCENE

By staff reporter Mary Hollywood

The age of modern mechanisation has meant progress in many fields but – as with most things – to gain a little you must lose a little. So it is that crafts and trades flourishing at the turn of the century have today almost disappeared.

Most of these trades kept the wheels of progress turning; the wheels which brought communication between the outposts of a pioneering country.

Where then today are these master craftsmen? The blacksmiths, farriers, wheelwrights, coach builders and coopers. Most have died – leaving few who remember.

And with the passing years the terms of trade have also changed. The blacksmith’s shop with its forge and anvil, a common sight until the early 1930s, and a scene of busy activity in country areas until more than a decade later, was not really worked by a blacksmith or “smithy” as he became known.

RARE SIGHT

This usually burly man, with his leather apron and hands just as tough and gnarled, was a farrier. His craft had its roots in history for, as the town barber was also the blood-letter and doctor-cum-dentist, the farrier added to his trade the profession of veterinary surgery.

The travelling farrier is still very much part of the New Zealand rural scene today, but the smell of the forge and searing hooves, the sound of hot shoes sizzling in the water barrel, or the sight of horses waiting patiently to be shod are all rare today.

At Havelock North such a sight can be found, possibly now only on Saturday mornings, when pony club women of the future – bring their mounts to Mr Robert Svendsen for attention.

Mr Svendsen has had a life-long association with horses. He can almost claim to be a farrier “by Royal Appointment” for it was his job to shoe the ponies belonging to the children of a former Governor-General, Sir Willoughby Norrie.

He feels he could be the only man to travel in a Vice-Regal car to Government House in Wellington dressed in his workday clothes; later to return home, chauffeur-driven, in the same splendid vehicle, with the sweat of toil on his brow!

While Hawke’s Bay – Taradale to be exact – can lay claim to being one of the last places in New Zealand to have a horse-drawn milk delivery, Mr Svendsen can claim to be the farrier responsible for the capital’s last milkcart horses.

As farrier to the Wellington City Council’s milk department, he cared for the shoes and hooves of 75 milk-cart horses, their harnesses and trappings.

PHASED OUT

He also shod horses used by the Police Department. These were later phased out and were probably last used at the time of the lock-out on the Wellington waterfront in the early 1950s.

Napier-born, and “a city boy at heart”, Mr Svendsen, just “took to horses” when he began his apprenticeship in the Hawke’s Bay district.

In the early 1940s he travelled the twisting, tortuous roads in the Akitio and Pongaroa districts of Southern Hawke’s Bay, working as a farrier and blacksmith. The “round-trip” took about seven weeks. He reached Dannevirke in time to start his circuit again.

Much of the area he covered was the last to enjoy the luxuries of electricity so he was kept busy repairing machinery, lighting plants, and anything else he could cope with on his portable forge.

Drays and even gigs were still in use and Mr Svendsen “re-tyred” many horse drawn vehicles during his trip, bending the flat iron so it curled to the right circumference for the wooden wheel.

FEW REMAIN

Today in the Hastings district, Mr Svendsen is kept busy tending to the requirements of the many equestrian sportsmen, women and children in the area. Polo ponies, hunters, show ponies and race horses form the bulk of his work.

Farm hacks are rapidly being replaced by the farm bike and fewer work horses are being used each year, says Mr Svendsen.

Few forges remain now in Hawke’s Bay, but one still in regular use is at Te Mahanga Station at Poukawa, south of Hastings.

Te Mahanga, formerly covering 19,000 acres, once boasted a work force of 43 men, each with their own horse – or two.

It was famed for its breeding stud and stabling.

Today the 20-stand woolshed, tiled brick – floored stables and blacksmith’s shop are mere shadows of bygone times but the forge still acts as a meeting place when the farrier is in the district.

Horses and ponies of all sizes line the hitching rail in the paddock outside waiting their turn.

Inside the forge antiquity is preserved. A rare sight is the large hand bellows, its rivets green with decay and leather wrinkled and dry.

Still, however, making its own particular wheezing noise as it is pumped by the blacksmith.

The forge it fans has worked thousands of hours. Not only heating the shoes for the station’s hacks but also every conceivable job needing a furnace for melting or shaping metal.

CARRIED WOOL

Re-tyring the drays which carried the wool to the port of Napier could not have been done without the skilled blacksmith, his tools of trade, forge and furnace.

Shoeing, done properly, takes a farrier about 30 to 45 minutes. He shoes about 10 – 15 horses each day. At this rate Mr Svendsen cares for about 3000 horses each year.

As with fashion footwear, style, design and workmanship must go into hand-made horseshoes. Slightly longer nails must be used for some horses – or even studs.

The price of shoes has increased only slightly (line unreadable). However, the cost of nails and studs has almost trebled in recent times. A set of shoes today costs about $3, but that is only the start of the expense involved.

Photo captions –

FINISHING OFF THE JOB, Mr Svendsen rasps off the rough edges, holding each leg on his thick leather apron.

PUMPING THE HAND BELLOWS, Mr Svendsen places the new shoe in the glowing embers. Electric fans have replaced the old bellows today. These bellows are one of the few, if not the only set in Hawke’s Bay.