There was a small building at the west end of the works which contained two forges and some heavy machinery.
Two men worked at the forges each day.
One was Bobby Wardlaw and the other Jimmy Benson and they were the blacksmiths and they were very skilled tradesmen who made the tools for the miners who worked underground each day to extract the clay which was made into heat resistant bricks mainly for the steel industry.
The miners worked until mid afternoon and they returned the tools to the blacksmiths who then worked on them so that they were 1st class to be picked up the next morning.
Each blacksmith worked alone for some time and then finished them off together with the heavy steam hammer.
At other times they worked on other jobs for the engineers in the works, making new requirements.
They also did work for the pattern makers and as I was an apprentice patternmaker, I had to take messages back and forward to the blacksmith shop quite often and spent quite a few hours there and got to know them often.
The blacksmiths got involved in new projects while I was there. The pattern makers started using aluminium in their moulds and these were made jointly by the patterrnmakers, who made the patterns and set them into a sand mould, this was then sent to the blacksmiths who poured the molten aluminium mould and emptied it later. The rough casting was then sent to the engineers to machine it.
One other notable odd thing about the two blacksmiths who worked together all day long, they lived next door to one another in the cottages.
But there were other stories about their relationship which. unfortunately, I was not party to. The families can continue their stories which were very interesting.
One other occupation that Jimmy Benson had was that he was one of the local villagers who ran the local library from the bowling club premises but I don’t know if they were paid or not.
