This article is largely based on Bill Massey’s (dec) anecdotes and recall from Robin Massey’s childhood. Effie Massey also assisted with reminiscences.
To the south of Burgundy Street, behind a number of businesses, runs Forge Lane. Nondescript it may be but it can lay claim to some historical significance. It is the only physical clue to the former location of Heidelberg Blacksmith Forge. I know little about the origin of the forge (131 Burgundy Street) but I do know about its end.
After WWII the forge was still shoeing horses for the semi rural Heidelberg area. Tommy Renahan, the owner, decided to retire and advertised the forge for sale. As a returned soldier, Bill Massey was eligible for a low cost Army loan and he bought the property with little capital behind him.
Bill had spent many happy hours hanging about the blacksmith forge as a boy. His uncle and aunt, Fred and Sis Biddiscombe, ran a dairy in nearby Rosanna. When Bill visited he was sometimes allowed to take a horse to be shod at the Heidelberg smithy. At that time, in the 1930’s, Rosanna Road was so quiet that it was considered safe and normal to let the dairy horses find their own way home after shoeing, back up Rosanna Road to the dairy.
Bill was a fitter and turner by trade and he soon turned the front of the site into an engineering workshop (Heidelberg Forge Engineering Co.) with the blacksmith forge continuing to run for some time from the original building at the rear. Shoeing horses ceased to be the focus, however, the forge was now making mainly agricultural equipment such as water tanks and seeding machines. It may have been about this time that the grand old (elm?) tree out the front which had shaded generations of waiting horses was cut down.
Eventually, Bill had the funds to expand his business. A large factory was constructed which completely covered the old forge area. Hidden inside, however, in semi darkness, remained the skeleton of the old blacksmith building. It was kept partly for sentimental reasons but it was also put to practical use as a storage area. Its walls, and I think, its roof were removed and it sat, somewhat forlornly, in the cavernous shell of the larger building.
When the site was redeveloped in the 1970’s for the more substantial brick building that stands today, the forge’s skeleton was dismantled. For commercial reasons a name was now required for the anonymous lane that ran behind the site. Feeling that the disappearance of the old forge needed acknowledgement, Bill petitioned the council with his choice of name – Forge Lane was born.
There is an old viewing shelter, stamped ‘Heidelberg Forge’ sitting on the side of the hill at Proclamation Park, Ringwood, between the athletics track and the baseball far corner.