A Legacy Lost to the third runway at Heathrow: The Forge

The Forge, Longford, 2007

There has been a forge in the village of Longford in Middlesex, for centuries. The Forge building we can see today is not a listed building, but has been preserved because it is part of the street scene in the Longford Conservation Area. This is all that remains of a once larger complex of workshops, barn, house and three cottages

 

Before industrialisation, the agricultural village community was heavily reliant on the services of the wheelwright and blacksmith. He made the carts and ploughshares, and general repairs to equipment and gate hinges. He also shoed the horses who were the main power source on the farms. However one enterprising blacksmith went further.

In the eighteenth century Thomas Swain was making bells at the Longford forge.  Thomas Swain was born in West Bedfont (on Heathrow airport’s southern border) and learned to make bells from Robert Catlin in St Andrew’s Holborn. He inherited the business of his master and moved the foundry to Longford in 1752. The type of bells Swain was making in Longford was called a crotal bell. A small spherical bell made by joining two semi-hemispherical pieces of metal, with an attachment at the top for hanging and a free-moving ball or “pea” enclosed. They were hung in clusters on horses’ harness and usually decorated with a pattern and the maker’s name. Occasionally metal detectorists still find bells with the initials TS which are attributed to him.[1]  Later Swain was making large hanging bells for churches in London, Surrey and Sussex. These were made in situ in a large pit dug near the intended church in order to make transportation easier.[2] However Thomas Swain’s home and base was in Longford. The records show that Swain was paying window tax in Longford in 1766 and land tax in 1767. He died in 1782 and was buried in Harmondsworth churchyard on 26 April in an unmarked grave.

 

While Swain was away making church bells, by 1765 John Heath was the blacksmith and the wheelwright in the forge. He lived, with his wife and three children, in the house attached to the forge and workshop. On the night of 7 March someone broke into the wheelwright’s home, by making a hole in the plaster at the back of the building with a bill-hook, which was left at the scene. The next day John Heath noticed certain items missing from the shop, namely about ten shillings in halfpence and farthings, some worsted stockings, two canisters containing about a quarter of a pound of tea each, and a 30 pound lump of sugar all with a total value of thirty shillings. A 150 yards along the Bath Road from the Forge lived John Sharborn who had a questionable reputation, but John Heath was prepared to think well of people and did not get suspicious until he saw Sharborn in his Sunday best wearing a pair of stockings similar to the stolen ones. Heath obtained a search warrant from the local magistrate and went to Sharborn’s house with the Parish Constable, Matthew East. Mrs Sharborn was at home and stood by while the search took place. They found the stockings and the canisters of tea. John Sharborn was arrested and at his trial at the Old Bailey maintained his defence story of buying goods from a Scotch [sic] pedlar at his door, and produced a bill on which he said the pedlar had written. The Jury did not believe him and found him guilty of felony. He was sentenced to transportation and in September 1765 he was placed on the prison ship Justitia on a journey to Virginia in Colonial America. [3] It is not known what happened to Mrs Sharborn and her two small sons, but if she had no extended family to support her she was probably taken into the workhouse.

John Heath died in August 1782, soon after Thomas Swain. A local landowner, William Godfrey bought the Forge and rented out the whole complex, including three adjacent cottages, several brick-built stables, two orchards, and a meadow,  to George Emmett.[4] After William Godfrey’s death in 1827 the business was bought by William Passingham, a wheelwright and Blacksmith in Harmondsworth village, who gave it to his son John to manage. John employed three men and one boy in addition to the family members.  He married Ann Piecey and they had five daughters and two sons, John and William. As was the custom at that time the sons were expected to follow their father’s trade. These sons were apprenticed into the business, working with their father, but as the boys got older there was not enough work for all three of them. The eldest son, John, married and moved to Slough, where he and his wife, Harriet, had a total of 14 children only seven of whom survived their childhood.  John died in 1917. 

His brother William stayed in Longford and in 1890 William was working, and living with his elderly widowed father who was becoming increasingly frail. When his father died in 1892 he was consoled by the close-knit Baptist community around him. Four years later, when William turned 40, he considered that as a successful businessman, and a respected member of the community, it was time to take a wife and maybe raise a family to inherit the business. He was attracted to a young widow who had fallen on hard times and they married in July 1896. Unfortunately for William she had lied about her age and was considerably older than he knew. Also, she was not used to country living and she found it hard to adapt to her new rural life. She began to drink heavily, neglected her household duties and declined in health. Eventually she had a fit and lapsed into a coma. Her husband sent for her father and they agreed that he and her mother should take her home to nurse her. This was the end of the marriage, but it didn’t end without a public scandal as each took the other to court and their marriage was publicly dissected. William couldn’t face the shame and soon after the final court case he said goodbye to the rest of his family and made for Southampton where he boarded a ship for Cape Town. It was a radical step to take, but his chagrin and humiliation left him little choice. Mrs Florence Passingham died in Bethnal House Asylum in 1902. William Passingham died in Cape Town in 1927.

By then Ambrose Cure had bought the wheelwright and blacksmith’s premises and the goodwill of the business, still known as Passingham’s. Ambrose Cure was now in a position to marry, Maude, his sweetheart from London and they settled into the Longford community. However 31-year-old Ambrose Augustus Cure found his skills as a coach-builder were no longer required. The transport industry was in transition and horse-drawn vehicles were being superseded by bicycles and the internal combustion engine. By 1902, Ambrose Cure was selling up the plant and effects of the business to move abroad.[5] The couple emigrated to South Africa where he continued his trade as a blacksmith. They returned from Cape Town with their two small children in September 1904, but by the end of 1905 they set sail for Australia and arrived in Sydney after a voyage of 56 days.

It was only after his arrival in Australia that Ambrose Cure decided to sell the freehold of the Longford premises. In June 1906, the property was up for sale. The freehold property consisted of a brick and slated 6-roomed dwelling-house with lean-to greenhouse, timber and tiled tool shed, large barn used as wheelwright’s shop, and farrier’s shop with furnace and large yard; together with 3 cottages adjoining.[6] With the proceeds of the sale Ambrose Cure brought a dairy farm in Byron Bay, New South Wales, where he died in November 1955.

In 1908 Mrs M.A. Bateman of Manor Farm, Harmondsworth, bought the Forge workshop complex for £675 which included the three thatched cottages that had been owned by her son-in-law Tom Adams. Tom Adams remained as tenant at the Forge and workshop and in 1913 was paying £15 a year rent on a 21 year lease, and living in Pine House behind the workshop. He lived there for the rest of his life. In January 1938 the three thatched cottages were condemned by the council as unfit for habitation and a clearance order was submitted to the Department of Health. The only form of sanitation for the three cottages were two pail closets. There was a public inquiry and protests from the long-time residents, but the demolitions still went ahead after the residents were given six weeks to vacate. The displaced residents were rehoused on the new council housing estate at Bell Farm in West Drayton.

Tom Adams, as well as being a blacksmith doing repair and bespoke work, was the son of a builder and carpenter, and he could turn his hand to any handyman task required by villagers. When Christopher Challis bought the neglected Weekly house in 1948 as a home for his young family, it was Tom Adams who helped him renovate and conserve the, now, Listed building for us to see today. Thomas William Adams died in 1962.

In 2006 the whole complex of forge buildings were redeveloped. The plan was to demolish all the main buildings, leaving just the small kerbside forge workshop. In the area behind this building were built two residential blocks. One with six studio flats, and one with six one-bedroom flats, and this is what we see today as Blacksmiths Court and Kings Court.

Like the whole village of Longford, (and most of Harmondsworth) this twenty-year-old development is under threat of demolition if the third runway is built at Heathrow airport. However, while the ancient blacksmith’s forge building exists we have a reminder of its contribution to village life over the centuries.

A fuller version of these, and other stories, about Longford appear in my book

 “The Vanishing Village: A Legacy Lost to Heathrow’s Third Runway”.

[1] UK Detector Finds Database. http://www.ukdfd.co.uk/pages/crotal-bells.html

[2] https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol2/pp165-168#fnn12

[3] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 09 January 2021), May 1765, trial of John Sharborn (t17650522-3).

[4] Morning Advertiser – Wednesday 16 May 1827.

[5] Uxbridge and W Drayton Gazette – Saturday 8 Marchg 1902.

[6] Uxbridge and West Drayton Gazette – Saturday 5 May 1906; ibid: Saturday 2 June 1906.

The Blacksmiths barn with the roof of the current building next to the caravan. 1940s

The layout of the buildings before redevelopment in 2006.

 

 

Tales from Longford: The Weekly House

This house and the village of Longford in West Middlesex will be demolished when the third runway at Heathrow airport is built.

The Weekly House 2018.

It had been ten years since the Great Fire of London, and Thomas Weekly, a wealthy London cloth-merchant was looking for a change in lifestyle. His ride along the Great Bath Road from his home in Westminster led him to the village of Longford, fifteen miles from London, in search of a farm that was for sale in the centre of the village.  Recently married he wanted to build a home for his bride and establish himself as a farmer and maltster.  As a Baptist, and a descendant of John Wycliffe, the medieval theological reformer, he was attracted to this village of non-conformists, who were now openly able to meet without fear of prosecution.

Thomas Weekly bought the farm and built the Weekly House as a family home. It was quite different from the timber-framed Tudor inns and houses that already existed in the village. The house was two storeys high and built of red-brick with two attic rooms, and a high pitched tiled roof. The walls were thick and the large sash windows had internal wooden shutters.

The two main rooms had huge beamed fireplaces large enough to stand-up in, with recesses in the chimney for smoking hams. These fireplaces and those of the bedrooms all connected to the central chimney. The beautiful staircase with wooden bannisters continued up to the attic on the second floor where there were two large attics rooms and a box room. On the northern side of the ground floor was a single-storey cool store room with hooks for storing hams and next to that a white washed dairy. On the eastern wall of the house was a large single-storey kitchen with a huge fireplace matching the one on the other side of the wall in the main house. As well as the kitchen, there was a boot room, log store and outside privy.

Next to the house, parallel to the Great Bath Road, Thomas Weekly built a long, weather-boarded malting barn, and separating the barn from the road was a brick-built wall with sloped and rounded coping.

Grade II listed barn next to Weekly House 2018.

Thomas Weekly and his family, lived in this house from the end of the seventeenth century, until the last surviving Weekly died in the house in 1899. After that the house and land was inherited by their cousins, the Wilds, who occupied the house until 1940. During the war the empty building was used as an ARP Warden’s post, and also an HQ for the local Home Guard. It suffered damage to the roof in 1944 when a flying bomb landed nearby and debris hit the Weekly House. After the roof was patched up the house stood empty. All its farmland had been compulsorily requisitioned to build a war-time airport in the neighbouring hamlet of Heathrow. In 1948 the Weekly House was bought by a local resident, Christopher Challis, who set about restoring it, with the help of the local blacksmith, Tom Adams, and made it into a family home once more. It is for this reason the house has survived. The house is now an office building and the House, barn and wall are now all grade II listed structures. The barn, now overgrown and derelict, is now on the Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register 2020.

When Thomas Weekly journeyed to Longford in 1676 he was not to know that he had founded a dynasty that continued for three centuries in the village of Longford. The family saw the village prosper and grow, and witnessed many historic events on the only road through the village, The Great Bath Road.

The Weekly House when it was a working farm.
Early twentieth century

My book, Longford: A Village on the Edge of Extinction, which tells the story of Longford over the last three hundred years, is due for publication soon.

 

Tales from Longford: The Strawberry Season

The village of Longford in West Middlesex will be demolished when the third runway at Heathrow airport is built.  

  

Zion Cottage

At first light, the front door of Zion Cottage opened on a glorious June morning in 1900.  Mrs Clara Brain, dressed in a shawl and head scarf with a white apron over her long black skirt, walked towards The Farm in the centre of Longford.  Even though it was 3am she were joined by a growing stream of similarly dressed women all moving in the same direction. The village was quiet as most residents had yet to begin their morning routine.  When the women reached the field they replaced their white aprons with coarse hessian sacks, criss-crossed their shawls across their bodies, under their arms and tied them at the back. They pulled their long skirts up between their legs and hitched them into the front of the waistband.  In the field, the boy from the village with his wooden rattle had been scaring the birds away since first light.  He was pleased to have some company.  The women immediately set to work.  The foreman allocated a row of strawberry plants to each girl.  He handed out wooden punnets and the girls picked the ripest fruit handling only the stem. The punnets were lined with a strawberry leaves before the fruit was laid gently on top.  Later in the packing shed, each punnet would be weighed to make sure it weighed exactly a pound, then 36 punnets would be packed in a wooden crate and the lid nailed down.  About sixty of these crates would be stacked ten-high on a lightweight yellow strawberry van that with one fast horse could travel the fifteen miles along the Bath Road to Covent Garden market in one and a half-hours.  Strawberries with the dew still on them would sell at a premium price in the market.

 

Fruit was one of the main produce of the market gardens in West Middlesex in the nineteenth century, but there was often a glut.  An enterprising farmer in nearby Sipson, Jonathon Smith, had started a Jam Factory there in the 1890s which would buy any farm surpluses.  One of the main crops in mid-summer was strawberries.  The berries ripened in the open fields where the strawberry plants were laid out in long rows and the plants packed with straw around them so that the slugs could not reach the ripe fruit.  The strawberry-picking season was relatively short, but labour intensive, and because the plants were at ground level, back-breaking.  The warm sun of mid-summer made the job easier, but in pouring rain it was unpleasant work.  Women were regarded as the best pickers of strawberries because of their light touch and Longford had an army of women who would rise at dawn to pick them.

 

Clara Brain was born in Weston on the Green, Oxfordshire, in 1856. She and  married the boy next door, West Brain, in 1889 when they were both 33 and moved to Longford  before the end of the century. Her husband worked as an agricultural labourer for H.J. Wild the biggest employer in Longford. Most of the farmland is now under Heathrow airport, but the main farmhouse still survives as the Grade II listed Weekly House.  West Brain was always known as Brother Brain because of his way of greeting people by calling them ‘brother’.  He was a lifelong Baptist and never missed going to chapel every Sunday.  His employer described him as a “salt of the earth”.  West died in Longford at the age of 87. Clara worked in the fields at harvest times, but was mostly a housewife. She won prizes for her bread and pastry-making in local produce shows.  She died in Longford aged 90 in 1947.

My book, Longford: A Village on the Edge of Extinction, is due for publication soon.