Anyone driving along the B4568 through Aberhafesp during the past three months will have seen the building work taking place on the old smithy building. Richard Griffiths, who bought the site of the old garage two years ago, has been making improvements to the property, erecting new fencing and has now completed the restoration of the old smithy building. The brickwork has been cleaned, repointed and repaired, new windows and doors have been fitted.
This site has been of local importance for hundreds of years. Until the twentieth century, when more houses were built along the main road and at Hillcrest, Aberhafesp was a parish with no discernible nucleus or centre. The church and hall stood back from the main road and a quarter of a mile to the west was a group of houses at the Pentre; a mile to the north was another small settlement with a chapel at Bwlch-y-ffridd. Otherwise there were scattered farms and two more chapels at Bethel and Rhydfelin. It was not a nucleated village like Betws Cedewain, Tregynon or Berriew. The nearest to a village centre was the area called the Pentre, the colloquial Welsh version of ‘pentref’ which means village. Here was the Rectory, newly built in the 1820s, Pentre House, of cruck construction which probably dates from the late fifteenth century, two timber box-framed cottages, Pentre Cottage and Yr Efail, which may date to c.1700 and a smaller, later house, Severn View. In addition there was the smithy and the pound.
The the Enclosure map of 1815 clearly shows this concentration of buildings.
The Old Smithy at the Pentre, Aberhafesp
by
Edward Parry
Enclosure map, 1815
The churchwardens’ accounts have references to sums paid for locks and keys for the church door and the parish coffer or chest, made by the blacksmith. Today, when we rely so much on cars, vans and lorries, it is easy to forget just how reliant society was on horses until relatively recently. It was only during the Second World War that tractors were introduced on farms and that happened more slowly in parts of rural Wales than in the lowlands of England. The blacksmith was therefore a very important craftsman in every village, not only for shoeing horses but for making the iron rims for the wooden cart wheels made by the wheelwright, Mr John Thomas, whose workshop was just fifty yards beyond the smithy on the right hand side of the road.
Mr Michael Jones of the Cwm recalls in the 1950s taking horses to the smithy to be shod as well as scythes to be sharpened and other pieces of farm machinery that needed mending. Michael remembers the smithy as a convivial meeting place where news and gossip was shared. The first postbox in Aberhafesp, bearing the initials VR (indicating that it dates from before 1901) fitted in the wall of the smithy was another reason for people to stop there for a chat.
The Victorian postbox
Mr Dick Swain, who died in 1963, was the last in a long line of blacksmiths who worked on this site, although the earlier smithies would have been much less substantial buildings. The house next door is called Yr Efail (the Smithy) and was home to generations of smiths. There was second smithy in Aberhafesp, at Bwlch-y-ffridd, where Graham and Christine Green live now; the last blacksmith there was the late Alun Pryce’s father, the smithy closed soon after the Second World War.
The smithy in the late 1950s with Dick Swain on the right and John and Bob Bresnen from the Pentre giving him a helping hand, watched by Mr John Thomas of Severn View.
When horses were phased out the Pentre smithy lost its primary purpose and like many in this area became a garage where farm machinery was repaired and cars were serviced and supplied with petrol. The first petrol pump was beside the east wall of the smithy; the garage, with a much larger workshop, run by Emrys and Doreen Evans, survived late into the last century. Another good local example of a similar transformation is at Revel (a corruption of Yr Efail), at the turning to Berriew off the main road to Welshpool.
The garage which succeeded the smithy
In the days before many fields were enclosed by hedges animals frequently strayed from their owner’s property, so there was a village pound where such wandering beasts were confined (or ‘impounded’) waiting to be rescued by their owners. Originally a wooden structure, in 1763 at a vestry meeting it was agreed to levy a rate of one half penny on all occupiers of land to build a stone pound. Three months later a levy of a penny was agreed to pay for ‘‘wicking’ (as in wickerwork) the pound, to provide a cover for the structure.
A section of wall at the bottom of the lane opposite the smithy survives from the pound (above).
Severn View, opposite the smithy, was demolished in 2009.
Together these few buildings remind us of the long history of the Pentre and the important part it played in the life of Aberhafesp. Today the smithy stands resplendent with its cleaned and newly pointed brickwork, the windows have been replaced and the large doors stand out in their shining paintwork of racing green.
The work of restoration was undertaken by Tai Dyfi who also built Lawnswood 1V, the house which replaced Severn View.