Get forging on a blacksmith experience in Essex! You'll find this smithy on a country farm estate near Maldon.

We are offering three-hour tasters and full day blacksmithing courses in Essex. As part of a small group 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 to take home what you make.

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. Our forge is traditional and uses coal allowing you to step back in time to try out this heritage craft.

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 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. So, hammer, anvils and tongs at the ready, it's time to work that metal into shape!