Why chain making is a family affair
Hearing the clunk of a steel hammer against the links of a chain, you would expect the person doing the battering to be a brawny man, not a nine-year-old girl.
Hearing the clunk of a steel hammer against the links of a chain, you would expect the person doing the battering to be a brawny man, not a nine-year-old girl.
However, Sarann Bradney has been going to Mushroom Green Chain Shop in Netherton since she was just three months old to watch her father Mick at work.
Mick is the sixth generation of chainmakers and is keen to teach the skills that have been passed down to him from his great-great-great grandfather, who was from Mushroom Green.
His family had a chain shop in the village for around 200 years and he says he grew up surrounded by the industry.
"When I was a boy chainmakers were everywhere," he says as he stands in front of the red-hot furnace at the Quarry Road chain making museum.
"As we waited for the bus in the morning to take us to Congreave School we would stand by the fires to keep warm.
"There were fires and furnaces everywhere, people can't imagine it now but at 5am in the morning you would hear the hammers going."
Mick, who works at Solid Stampings in Cradley Heath, remembers how his father Arthur would take him to various chainmaking workshops.
The youngster would cautiously stand by the doors and watch the men at working on the huge links of chain.
"It was something I always wanted to do," says Mick, aged 61.
"From the age of five my dad would put me by the fire with a piece of iron, a pair of tongues and a hammer, and let me play.
"At that time there weren't any women chainmakers, although I know that my grandmother and her mother had done it."
Mick still uses a hammer that is around 100 years old and was used by his great-grandmother.
"I see hammers like this in museums but because I'm a traditional chainmaker I still use the old equipment passed down to me," he says.
"The last women chainmaker was Lucy Woodall but I'm keen to pass the skills on to the next generation.
"I've taught my wife Annette how to make chain and watching her learn these forgotten skills is like seeing a dinosaur come back to life."
Mick lives in Trejon Road, Cradley Heath with Annette and their daughter Sarann.
Annette says she has watched Mick making chain for years and then in May decided to give it a go. "I took to it within weeks," says Annette, 46.
"A few months ago I did my first demonstration at the Mushroom Green shop and then went over to the Black Country Living Museum. Once you get into it, chainmaking is addictive. I would like to teach other women how to make chain."
The Mushroom Green chain shop dates back to the 1950s and is run by Dudley Council. Records show that chainmaking had started in Mushroom Green by 1810 when workers who made nails adapted their hearths to make chain.
By the end of the 19th century most properties in Mushroom Green had a chain shop close to them and several survived into the twentieth century.
However, only the one remains in its original form having been restored by the local authority and the Black Country Society in the 1970s. Sarann, a pupil at Timbertree Primary School, says she has grown up watching her dad making chain.
"I have been coming down to Mushroom Green since I was a little girl," she says.
"I've always been interested in it and want to be a metal work artist when I'm older. I'm a different girl to people at school as they are into getting new clothes and shoes.
"But I think I'm better off than them because I have a loving family and my chainmaking."
