Get forging on a blacksmith experience in Essex! You'll find this smithy on a farm estate in Maldon. This is where the metal-bending magic takes place under the watchful eye of expert smith, Tom. Working with steel and wrought iron for many years, he's a great teacher for budding blacksmiths.

We are offering three-hour tasters and full day blacksmithing courses in Essex. Numbers are limited to just two, so you get maximum hands-on time, access to the traditional tools of the trade and lots of individual attention from your host. The aim is for you to learn some basic blacksmithing skills and make a couple of items that you'll be able to take home with you.

As you'll soon discover, there's always a lot going on in a working smithy like this one in Essex. As well as preparing the raw materials (the metal) and the tools, you'll need your heat source. One of the duties you'll be tackling is tending the fire to make sure it's kept stoked and ready to heat the metal to red hot.

And when your length of metal is bright red and glowing, it's time to try out one of the most important blacksmith processes - drawing. This is basically making your hot metal piece longer and thinner by working and pinching it while it's hot. You hit the hot part of the metal with your hammer and the malleable metal stretches and flattens.

A few hours of shaping, bending, pinching and upsetting (the opposite to drawing) the metal and hopefully you'll have fashioned your very own forged metal piece.

Learning from a highly experienced blacksmith on these taster and full-day experiences in Essex means you will appreciate just how intricate blacksmithing work is. It's a real skill to not underwork or underheat the metal, as much as it is to not overwork or overheat it either. So, hammer, anvils and tongs at the ready, it's time to work that metal into shape!