PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
Ronnie Carter to the Queen: "And if it goes dull, give it a quick rub up with that"
Ronnie Carter, blacksmith, Freeman of the City of London, resident of Simonstone, which is near Padiham, which is near Burnley, which is in Lancashire, died in 1999. He was a friend of 20 years' duration and I am no longer sure which is man or myth.
Did he really present the Queen with a dog grate, delve in his pocket, produce a tube of black polish, and say to her, "And if it goes dull, give it a quick rub up with that?" Did he really park his car immediately outside St Paul's because he was giving a talk there and could not think of any other place to put it? Did his wife, Sheila, design, and he create Britain's beacon (lighted by Prime Minister Joh
n Major one dark night) to mark our entry into the Common Market? I am on firm ground in regarding the latter as true because I sent him a note to say that I had watched the ceremony on television and was enjoying the sight of his handiwork until some dam'd fool set fire to it.
In his later years, he went to elevated dinners in the capital, being a member of his craft guild, and there, on one occasion, he sat next to lord someone or other. "Are you a real lord?" he asked, noting the gentleman's place card. The real lord warmed to Ronnie. Ronnie said he had always wanted to see the interior of the House of Lords. The lord invited him to a meal there. Afterwards they sat together on the balcony overlooking the Thames, and Ronnie waved to people passing by on the waterway. He did this with great enthusiasm, rising to his feet. As they waved back, he thought: "They'll think I'm a real lord, too."
Ronnie and his sons, two of whom went to Gordonstoun (which gives them something in common with Prince Charles) created exquisite ironwork. Sheila produced exquisite designs and is practised in heraldry.
Samlesbury Hall, a beautiful historic building between Blackburn and Preston has an enormous fireplace in the main hall and equally enormous chandeliers. Ronnie furnished the former and created the latter.
He was a vigorous man, and he liked others to be vigorous. He always wants to know whether I was writing. If I was not writing, he said I should be writing: a hard taskmaster.
After working in the acrid fumes of his forge for a couple of decades, he was successfully treated for throat cancer. He did not like the hospital atmosphere so he insisted on meeting his visitors in a pub nearby. He got up early each morning from his hospital bed and went running. He did not like the lavatories so he found one of his own somewhere in the building.
I do not, for a moment, suppose that I would have known Ronnie Carter had he not made a crucial decision in I947.
He was a mill manager with two secretaries and a respected niche in the orderly ways of life. The textile trade had gone into decline and he had the choice: to give it up or move from Padiham to Manchester, where he could have carried on being a mill manager. That was when he took an anvil home and said: "I'm going to be the village blacksmith." He was 47. "I had nothing, and it was wonderful," he said. "So long as they left me the home I lived in, I was all right. I wanted somewhere to work, so I built a little garage."
Sheila sold groceries, cups of tea and cigarettes to help out. What food they did not sell, they could eat. First, he tried making radiators and it almost cleaned him out.
Sheila became pregnant (they had five children), so he bought a bit of land nearby and said: "'I will build you a house.' I had no money for bricks so I made my own. I was pedalling around on a bike, carrying a drill."
He worked there I6 hours a day with the help of a brickie and anyone he could press into service, and eventually he had a, large bungalow with a forge next door. He was still living there when he died. The floor of the bungalow is of pine from Fleetwood pier, I03 years old, once under water. Beneath the floor, he allowed space for the storage of ale, which he made himself for he had to give up smoking and going to pubs. I can attest to the fact that Carter ale was possibly the best in the North, for he was a careful brewer, importing his yeast from Germany. I have been slightly confused more than once in the conviviality of his home. More recently, he had taken to wine which I felt was, in his case at any rate, like a champion miler taking up draughts.
In his first year as a blacksmith, he was doing repairs to ironwork, bits of restoration, and looking at old masters' work. He never advertised directly, reasoning that each piece of work should attract several other orders.
He was diligent in the pursuit of skill. He went to Zurich and admired a balcony in iron. He reckoned he could do the same balcony, but that it would take him 40 years or so. Ah, well. The autumn leaf intrigued him and he spent I0 years producing one in metal that satisfied him. "I always feel the leaf is the mouth of the plant," he said, "and it produces the fruit. When it is done, it is like us, finishing our lives. The work, you see, should tell you something." The veins of the leaf were indented in metal. He improved on his technique so that the veins were raised, as they are in nature.
His candelabra might be around in a thousand years; like the work of mediaeval craftsmen, much of his is made to survive the centuries.
He has never resented time: the work he did impresses others but he was always looking for ways of improving.
In the early days, when he could not work in heavy materials because he did not have the equipment, he was producing delicate filigree work in metal. All he had was a pair of pliers, a blow lamp, a brazing rod. He imagined he was doing something unique and showed his stuff to the lady of the hall nearby. She said one of her ancestors had brought a similar work back from Germany in the I600's. They were practically identical. He thought: I'll never say I've invented anything again.
Steadily, his work has become widely known. It went all over the world. He made dog grates, church ornamentation and great gates, pokers with rams' heads (the ram being his trade mark), fire backs and coats of arms; or to be more accurate, he and his lads made them, for they are grown up now and craftsmen in their own right.
The degree of Ronnie Carter's wealth lay in his freedoms. He felt no insecurity, even in the hard days, because he reasoned that life itself is insecure -"it's the challenge, you see." All over the British Isles, the numbers of people rebelling against the mass-produced, frantic, super-speeded, ulcer-producing amalgams of fears, ambitions and anxieties that, together, represent modern civilisation are growing. The daily round has, for many, become an exposed nerve. The greatest terrorists are not those who plant bombs, but those who call themselves higher management in the larger corporations, and they blow up people through accountants. I recall a queue of parachutists waiting to board an aircraft before jumping from it, and a general had a word with them before takeoff. "Sir," said one of these anonymous people in the queue, who happened to be the padre, "this is no life for a Presbyterian minister."
Too much of employment, these days, is like being that Presbyterian minister. Ronnie Carter was wise to have none of it.
He picked up his blacksmith's skills from his father and in turn he passed them to his children. "It's a little like a magic circle," he said, "so much to know, and no book to consult." His Freedom of the City allowed him to drive sheep over Westminster Bridge and, if called upon, to be hanged by a silken rope.
I told him the sheep did not interest me, but that if the rope became necessary, to give me a buzz.
So, then, to the funeral. where his daughter, Vicky, said, publicly and with affection::
"He was at his most embarrassing when I was a teenager - being collected from the youth club disco by a man wearing a leather apron and clogs and with half a football on his head was not so cool. He was even more embarrassing buying himself new trousers. Each pair had to be trade tested by dad doing squats and bunny-jumps. Riping sounds from the gents' changing rooms followed. Then a lecture from dad on how all trousers should allow you to vault over a ten-foot wall, do cart-wheels, or give a fencing lesson."
That was Ronnie Carter.
The words beneath the picture of him on the funeral order of service were:
Give thanks for a wonderful life.Geoffrey Mather © 2004
31 March, 2007