How Wray village went hammer and tongs to forge an industry

Prior to industrialisation, the production of nails was done by hand by local craftsmen.

The trade was domestic in character. Workshops were usually attached to the dwelling house and operated on a small-scale, typically employing a few men.

For nearly a century, the village of Wray was home to many such workshops.

One of the earliest records relating to the local nail trade appears in the accounts of Hornby Castle estate.

The entry, made in the year 1581-2, records that the estate ‘paid 6d for boards for the mill and 3d for nails.’

Later references are to be found in the diary of George Smith, estate manager at the castle.

Entries record the estate paying for nails from William Ramsden in 1793 and 1796, William Thompson in 1820 (for Tatham colliery) and Thomas Blackburn in 1823 (for Hornby mill).

Demand for nails came from the domestic market and overseas, from the colonies in America and the West Indies.

The ‘great rebuilding’ of rural England that took place between c.1550-1640, due to increases in commerce, wealth and the availability of building materials, introduced new architectural designs and improvements that required many different types of nails in large quantities.

Shipbuilding was another industry heavily reliant on nails.

The expansion of the nail-making industry was also due to improvements in the manufacturing process, particularly from c.1750 when advances in ironmaking increased the availability of the rods used for nails.

However, by the middle of the nineteenth century, making nails by hand had peaked.

Machine-made nails had been introduced some years earlier and competed with hand workers with increasing success.

Like many other old trades, nail-making had its own customs, some of them unique. Nailing was essentially a family enterprise; even children were put to work.

Starting at an early age, the nailer soon developed a high degree of skill. A study of the work from 1915 showed there was no way of improving the technique.

The nailer’s equipment was simple: a hammer, a small anvil, a ‘bore’ or hollow tool in which the partly finished nail was placed to have its head formed, and a treadle-hammer for heading.

The iron rods were heated in a small hearth similar to those used by blacksmiths, albeit much smaller.

The most expensive piece of equipment was the bellows. These were made from cowhide and operated by a wooden handle to blow air into the base of the forge.

Some workshops also had an ‘oliver’. This was a spring-loaded hammer used for making very large nails.

It was brought down onto the anvil by a foot pedal and lifted again by a spring bough of a tree attached to the wall of the workshop.

Ash or holly was generally used. This machine, with a hammerhead weighing between 10 and 40 lbs, left the operator with both hands free and sped up the process.

The nail-maker would begin by placing three or four iron rods into the forge fire.

The bellows would be pumped, fanning the flames and raising the temperature. Once a rod was sufficiently heated, it was removed using tongs and placed on the anvil to be shaped and pointed.

The pointed end was nicked to length, inserted into the ‘bore’ or holder and twisted to separate the metal.

The holder would have a countersunk shape in the top from which a section of the shaft could protrude.

The top of the nail would then be struck with the hammer to flatten and shape the head.

After the head had been formed, a lever-operated paddle was struck, ejecting the nail from the bore. Nails would then be placed in a water trough to cool.

Using this method, an experienced nailer could produce 250 per hour.

Up until the end of the sixteenth century, the iron used to manufacture nails was hand-cut from sheet iron using hammer and chisel – a tedious and time-consuming task.

The invention of the slitting mill revolutionised this part of the process as it cut the iron into rods ready to be made into nails.

First introduced in England c.1628, the slitting mill greatly increased production.

In these water-powered mills, a bloom of iron (the ball of iron removed from the furnace) was taken from the puddling furnace and hammered out into a flat strip.

The puddling process turned cast iron into wrought iron. The term ‘puddling’ refers to the stage where the molten iron was stirred with a long iron bar to promote the reaction of

air and carbon.

The process was invented by Henry Cort, who was born in Lancaster in 1740.

Following puddling, the iron was reheated and passed between rollers to achieve the desired thickness.

The sheet of wrought iron could then be passed through the slitting machine to form rods.

A considerable amount of fuel was required to heat the forges. Coal was unsuitable as its high sulphur content prevented it reaching the required temperature.

Instead, a type of coke was used, called ‘breeze’ or gledes’. This was obtained by burning small pieces of coal in a dome-shaped oven, known as a ‘cinder oven’.

This type of fuel was made at many coal mines in the Lune Valley.

The village of Wray was the main place for nail-making in the Lune Valley.

However, by the mid-nineteenth century the industry was in decline.

The 1841 census lists fourteen nail-makers in the village but by 1871 my great-great-grandfather, William

Kenyon, was the last remaining.

By 1881, aged 72, he was listed as retired, thus bringing an end to a once thriving village industry.