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Local Belfast blacksmith fronts Heritage Campaign

CITB NI is delighted that Owen Mort is fronting the main Heritage Lottery Fund's story telling campaign.   Owen was successful in completing a training programme delivered by CITB NI and predominantly funded by HLF. Owen spent a year training with the Historic Environment Division at their depot in Moira.  Owen is one of 34 trainees that have benefited from this training programme. 

CITB NI also worked with colleges to upskill lecturers, assessors and ambassadors to improve the availability of Heritage training within Northern Ireland.  Owen has now successfully set up his own business www.blackanvil.co.uk and CITB NI is delighted to have played a role in his success. Find out more about Heritage training here http://www.citbni.org.uk/Heritage.aspx

Read Owen's story here.......

Owen Mort had just completed an all night shift at the shipyard in Belfast where he worked as a welder when he saw an advert that transformed his life.
It was for a course to retrain as a heritage blacksmith, which was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund under its Skills for the Future programme.
He got a place, left his job and within days realised that this what he was born to do. As soon as the course was completed he set up his own business, Black Anvil, which is based on the family farm in the remote and tranquil Clogher Valley, Co Tyrone.
Start up costs were minimal: he bought an anvil on Gumtree for just £150, acquired a blacksmith’s leg vice for even less, got a full set of hammers and other tools from an old blacksmith who had just retired, which he has restored, and built his own furnace in an outbuilding. Even better than that now he has everything he needs in order to make any more tools he requires himself. That is one of the joys of the craft: if you don’t have the tool you need, you can make it in a few hours.
Owen did not advertise or market his business, yet from the beginning the work flowed in: local farmers wanting gates and tools repaired, customers who wanted handmade railings and elaborate gates, shows and fairs who wanted him to showcase his craft. Over and above that there are the heritage projects: restoring railings, gates, and ornamentation using the same techniques with which they were made. He has even built a footbridge to provide access to the prehistoric Springfarm Rath in Antrim.
Owen also took the time to grow a long, bushy beard. “It is actually a practical thing, not a fashion statement,” he says. “When you are working with fire and metals sparks fly and if you are clean shaven they get stuck to your face, and burn. With a beard, they just singe the hair and then fall to the floor. That is why so many blacksmiths have beards!”
Owen, 28, graduated in mechanical engineering at the University of Ulster at a time when recession meant that job vacancies were scarce. That’s why he got a job as a welder, today he is one of a small handful of young people who are reviving an ancient craft.
He said: “It’s incredible really, the farm gates I am repairing today were made by a blacksmith who lived less than a mile down the road. And a hundred years ago wherever you were you were never more than a mile away from a forge. Today by my reckoning there are just five blacksmiths, in Northern Ireland qualified to do heritage work.
“I love the work. My slogan is “bringing metal to life,” that’s what I do and that’s the joy of it, you can do pretty much what you want with it once you know how.  And I would like to thank National Lottery players everywhere for giving me the opportunity to acquire these skills.”