When Barbara Harding and her husband Rusty bought the old blacksmith shop that sat on the side of Route 30 in Cornwall in the 1990s, they decided to learn the craft.
Around that time, a passerby might have seen a plume of smoke coming from the shop's chimney. The plaque identifying its National Register of Historic Places status may have even piqued their interest enough to stop by. If Rusty was inside, he’d open the doors and invite them in.
“It was really exciting for me, anyways, to drive by and see the smoke coming up out of the chimney, knowing that he was in there working, and the smells and the pounding, and seeing the fire in the hearth was just, I don't know, it's just really exhilarating, because you're stepping back in history,” Harding said.
After her husband’s health declined several years ago, Harding tried to keep up the building, which dates back to around 1791. But recently, it had become too much. Now, she’s put the Old Stone Blacksmith Shop on the market, along with all the tools and metal implements inside, for $49,000. The land included is not much bigger than the footprint of the building itself. There is no water, nor septic, nor electricity.
“We purposely kept the blacksmith shop as close to the way we found it, which was honoring its history,” Harding said.
It is indeed rich with history — and tools, lots of tools. “Everything that one would need is in there,” Harding said.
Built into a small hill, the shop is constructed of roughly textured limestone blocks. According to its National Register of Historic Places nomination forms, it was actively used as a blacksmith shop from when it was built until 1908. In the 1970s, then-owner Stuart Witherell restored the shop and brought in tools, which are still inside. This building, and the tools within, hearken back to a time when blacksmiths were integral to their communities.
Dick Sargent is an East Dover-based blacksmith and smithing instructor who worked in a circa-1840s stone shop in Hartland in the 1970s.
He said when the Cornwall shop was in its heyday, it likely would have been one of several in town sharpening plows for farmers, making chains or axes, shoeing oxen and horses, or repairing carriages and farm equipment.
In the past several years, at least two other historic blacksmith shops have found new owners in Vermont. One was turned into a jeweler’s studio. The other became a woodworking shop.
If a blacksmith were to purchase the space and the tools within, Sargent said, it wouldn’t take too much for them to get it functioning again.
“It's a trade that you can get by with amazingly little and still accomplish some incredible work,” Sargent said. “If you've got a hammer and an anvil — I mean, even if you don't have tongs, if you got a hammer and an anvil and a bar 16 inches long, you can make a pair of tongs and you're ready to go.”
In fact, Harding said there are several bags of coal that will be sold with the shop. So possibly, if a blacksmith were to buy the space, smoke could soon billow out of that old chimney once again.
