Qualla: Chain Bridge Forge, Spalding

Chain Bridge Forge, Spalding: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bearas, CC BY-SA 4.0. The fee was one pound. On 20 September 1988, after two years of patient negotiation, the South Holland District Council bought the Chain Bridge Forge from Geoffery Dodd for that symbolic sum - a forge his grandfather George had bought in 1899, that he had inherited and worked all his life, that was now too decrepit to keep going and too important to demolish. Dodd was retiring. The building was nearly two centuries old. It had operated continuously as a blacksmith's workshop since around the 1830s. Three years after the sale, English Heritage paid for the restoration. Twenty-four years after that, the Friends of Chain Bridge Forge opened it as a museum where, today, you can watch the hearth lit and the hammer fall, and try your hand at hammering hot iron yourself. It is, as far as anyone can tell, the last working blacksmith's forge in Spalding - and arguably one of the last in Britain to have run continuously, in family hands, from coach age to motor age to museum age.

Image: Bearas | CC BY-SA 4.0

Chain Bridge Forge, Spalding: Why the Bridge Was Made of Chains

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bearas, CC BY-SA 4.0. The forge takes its name from a curious neighbour. Beside the building runs the River Welland, and across the river crouches a small footbridge. Today it is ordinary enough - a flat span you would not notice if you were not looking. But the watercolours of Hilkiah Burgess, held i...

Image: Bearas | CC BY-SA 4.0

Chain Bridge Forge, Spalding: Three Generations of Dodds

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bearas, CC BY-SA 4.0. George Dodd took possession of the forge in 1899 and the family kept it for three generations. The work changed with the times. For most of the early 20th century, the forge shoed horses - cart horses, plough horses, the gentry's mounts - and made or mended agricultural ironwork:...

Image: Bearas | CC BY-SA 4.0

Chain Bridge Forge, Spalding: A Living Museum

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bearas, CC BY-SA 4.0. The restoration in 1991, done by the Spalding builders R. G. Sharman on behalf of the council, kept the building as the Dodds had left it. The brick hearth still works. The bellows still pump. The anvils are in their places. The tongs hang on the wall where they always hung. When...

Image: Bearas | CC BY-SA 4.0

Chain Bridge Forge, Spalding: Iron in the Welland Country

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bearas, CC BY-SA 4.0. Spalding is flat country, fen country, drained country, the silt soils of the South Holland marshes given over to flowers and vegetables. It is not where you would expect to find a heritage of metalwork. But every fen village had a forge. Every market town had its smiths. The hor...

Image: Bearas | CC BY-SA 4.0