Mousehole Forge

Now in hardcover
108 Pages and Color and B&W Illustrations on heavy paper

History, lore and details about the world's longest operating anvil manufacturer.

This is an historical treatise about the famous Mousehole Forge near Sheffield England, where anvils and vises were manufactured for hundreds of years. Mousehole Forge is said to be the first and longest running anvil factory in the world.

"And yonder stands old Mousehole Forge In dingy honours dres't, Famed in the days of good King George For anvils, England's best."

With these words from Rivelin By Joseph Senior (1819-92), Richard Postman opens his second ode to the anvil and once again makes a major contribution to the blacksmithing and tool collecting community.

Starting with the story of how he met his co-authors John and Julia Hatfield and chronicling their restoration of several of the original buildings of the ancient Mousehole Forge in Sheffield, England, Postman does his usual thorough job of introducing the world to the origins of so many of our favorite anvils. In the process, he corrects some errors that had in-advertently crept into his seminal volume, ANVILS IN AMERICA.

Mousehole Forge changed hands numerous times over the years while making the same high quality product for those hundreds of years. Mousehole anvils were the earliest commerically imported anvils in the United States and make up the vast majority of old anvils found.