| Notes |
- Fred earned his living as a master farrier and blacksmith. On the 1901 Census, he gave his profession as ‘wheelwright's smith’ and was living in Hornsey. He was a bell ringer at Holy Trinity, Eltham from 1906, prior to which the family lived in Camberwell. He is recorded in the 1911 Census living with Annie and their two boys at 2 Blunts Road, Eltham. His grandson Martin Gill Ash wrote on 7 Feb 2003, ‘Fred Ash was living at 43 Lynton Road, Hornsey which is still there according to the London A to Z. He is shown aged 26 and a wheelright's smith.’ According to his son Fred, he worked as an inspector in a dockyard after World War I because he could not find enough work as a farrier to support his family.
During the war, family stories record that he lived in Birmingham for a while. A blacksmith from south-east London might have moved temporarily to Birmingham during World War One to take advantage of the high demand for skilled metalworkers in Birmingham’s booming wartime industries. During the war, Birmingham became a strategic hub for arms, munitions, and engineering production, described by military leaders as essential to the war effort and often likened to Germany’s Krupps works for its capacity and output. Major factories such as BSA, Mills Munitions, Kynoch’s, and numerous engineering firms rapidly expanded and urgently needed additional skilled labour, including blacksmiths, for metalworking, forging, equipment repair, and machinery production required in arms manufacturing.
London, though itself an industrial centre, did not have the same concentration of heavy engineering related specifically to munitions and arms as Birmingham, which drew workers from around the country to fill roles in national factories and private plants that shifted to war production. Temporary migration for skilled work was common, with blacksmiths especially in demand for their expertise in forging, toolmaking, and maintaining production equipment essential to keeping assembly lines running at peak efficiency for the war effort.
Notes from Brian Ash, Fred’s grandson
‘Martin Ash’s research has traced our grandfather, Fred Ash, back to the village of Seavington St Michael near South Petherton in Somerset. It was there that he learned the trade of farrier or village blacksmith. At some point before the end of the century he moved to South London and met up with Annie Breed who was in service in North London. Annie (b.1881) came from the village of Orwell, six miles south of Cambridge. I recently visited the cottage where she grew up and spoke with the new owners; a charming young solicitor, his wife and three young children. I took some photographs which have come out quite well and you may like to see them one day.
‘Fred and Annie were married in Orwell on 1st February 1902 and our father Frederick John Ash was born on 21st December 1902. I remember my Grandpa Ash as a kindly old man with a Somerset accent but I never seem to have had time to sit down with him and talk about his past. I know that, during the First World War, he went to live in Birmingham for a while, probably helping with the war effort. Between the wars he was a member of the bell ringing team that rang the bells in Eltham Parish Church. He ran an allotment for some years as there was little space to grow vegetables in their small back garden and he died in 1954 following an attack of shingles.
‘When Grandpa Ash (Frederick John) was born in 1902 they were living at 26 Badsworth Road, Camberwell, South London. At some point Annie and Fred bought a small terraced house in Blunts Road, Eltham at the High Street end and that was where her two sons Frederick John, and Albert were brought up. Our father was always known as John to the family but Fred to his work colleagues. My Grandpa (Frederick b.1875) was at that point working as a Blacksmith in Catford.
‘In the late '20s, possibly when her boys left home, Annie and Fred moved to a slightly better end-of-terrace home further up the same street, 47 Blunts Road.’
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1875 - 1954 (79 years)
Census
