Countryfile – Adrian’s Poker Making

It’s only a few weeks since our students were featured on BBC’s Countryfile, and you can still catch the episode on iPlayer! It was a great programme that explored a whole range of country crafts.

Adrian Legge, who works with our undergraduate students at Holme Lacy, was asked to represent the National School of Blacksmithing on the programme. The filming took place at Acton Scott Farm and he chose to take Laura Bradley, one of our third year students, with him. Adrian was tasked to work with one of the presenters, Ellie Harrison, and show her how to make a poker, using the forge at Acton Scott which is more often used for demonstrating the process of shoeing their shire horses. It was a first class bit of filming and I think the best quote from Adrian was: “Its easy peasy, lemon squeezy!”. I’m not sure we’d all agree!

The feature also included some long shots of our students working over at the Rural Crafts Centre. Any publicity about Blacksmithing and Artist Blacksmithing is really positive, as much of the general population don’t know what Blacksmiths and Artist Blacksmiths do with some still assuming that it’s about shoeing horses, so it was great that country file included forging in their craft feature.

Del