Heavily built and hugely strong, the smith was credited with mythical ancestry. For the Romans, the first smith was Vulcan, who forged Jupiter's thunderbolts. In Germanic, Norse and Old English legend, Weyland the smith had supernatural powers, and it was Weyland who fashioned the hero Beowulf's chain mail.

The smith's day would begin early, for he had to bring the fire in his forge up to the right high temperature and keep it going with huge bellows. To make horseshoes, he would cut shoe-length sections from metal bars and then heat them over the fire, beating them into shape with a catshead hammer. The nail holes were punched through with a tool called a pritchell. Each horse had its own unique shoeing template, which the smith used to form shoes that would fit precisely. Many a horse with hoof trouble would find relief at the smith's hands, for he had the skill to pare and clean the horse's hooves.

In the years before the coming of the motor car, there was plenty of work for the smith - everyone rode, and there were carriage horses, plough teams, hunters and cart horses too, which all needed to be re-shoed every few weeks.

Smiths were skilled in other kinds of metalwork too. They fitted cart wheels with iron rims, and they could make and mend all kind of tools, especially farm tools. They would even mend kettles, pots and pans.

But the smith had to adapt to change when the age of the motor car arrived. Some smiths changed from being farriers to being mechanics, and learned the skills of motor vehicle repair, swapping their hammers and bellows for acetylene welding equipment. Other smiths made the break from traditional farriery to specialise in ornate decorative architectural ironwork.

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