The contents of the shop came largely from the Barney Brothers Blacksmiths shop at Stockenchurch. The Barney Bros. started work in about 1900. A society member living in Pitstone gave bricks from their garden wall to build the forge. It is a working forge and demonstrations are sometimes given on the Special Open Days. We tend to associate blacksmiths nowadays with shoeing horses but in the farming community they undertook almost any work using metal, from making and repairing farm implements to patching cooking pots. The many tools around the room were mostly made by the blacksmith himself from wrought iron. Where hardened carbon steel was required for cutting purposes, the favourite source of material was old metal files. Coke or small coal was used on the fire with the large bellows required to 'blow' the fire, giving the very high temperatures required to soften the iron or steel, enabling the blacksmith to bend, shape or when heated to the highest temperature, beat the metal together to form a 'blacksmith's weld'
