Building record EXG 092 - Old Smithy

The old smithy lies at the southern edge of Exning village adjoining an unmade track known as Frogmore and immediately behind 1 Lacey's Lane. The area is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey of 1886 as an open field, but had been extensively developed by the second edition of 1901 which marked the site as a 'smithy'. Of the three attached buildings shown in 1901 only a gault (white) brick shed with a half-hipped pantiled roof now survives. This structure has been stripped of its internal fixtures and fittings, having operated as a garage workshop since the mid-20th century, but its distinctive external appearance is largely unaltered. The northern façade contains an arcade of four windows and a pair of sliding entrance doors much as shown in a set of architect's drawings submitted with the original planning application to Newmarket Urban District Council in January 1899. The building was commissioned as a 'forge and shoeing shop' by George Grimes, blacksmith and grocer, of 1 Lacey's Lane, from Herbert Hunt of Burwell. The plan shows a pair of internal forges, each with its own bellows in the eastern section of the structure and a shoeing shop entered by sliding doors to the west. An area of stone slabs is now all that remains of the forges and the doors have been widened slightly. The western gable shows the scar of a demolished timber-built storage shed with a single-pitch roof (S1).