Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2010 | Page 92

life

LOCAL BUSINESS

February/March 2010

George Stay building the new Avenue Road workshop, c1963 -

Public demonstration by George Stay at Royal
Agricultural Show, Blackwater, 1963

Staying the distance
Roz Whistance meets a blacksmithing family which goes back 10 generations, and
hears how they have made their mark on the Island

“YOU won’t find anyone else like a

work is everywhere on the Island: the iron

came back with photos of the day those

blacksmith!” Now you might expect these

surround of the sign for the Holliers Hotel

railings were fitted! I said ‘My grandfather

to be the words of Mr Stay Senior, now

in Shanklin: a three-dimensional ‘welcome

would have made those’!”

semi-retired after a lifetime in this ancient

to Brading’ sign; and the distinctive

trade. In fact this is his son speaking,

door knocker made by Will’s grandfather

you are struck by the fact he is just as

Will Stay – funny, bright and blokeish,

for Yaverland Manor, in the shape of

fresh faced and unlined as his son. You

but only 27. Will’s passion for the work

a horned cow. “That was the breed of

can’t help thinking that this blacksmithing

he has been born into is charismatic.

cattle they had at Yaverland at the time,”

lark might be good for a person.

Blacksmithing seems as relevant an
industry today as it was for his forebears.
Will is not the original “and son” in
the firm’s title. He is the 10th generation
of the firm, which was founded in the
1790s. “I’m lucky, very lucky. I’ve got the
tools: all this was here when I was a kid.

His father, Tim Stay, comes in now, and

‘A customer wanted us to copy
some railings in Ryde she liked.
I showed her photos of the day
those railings were fitted. My
grandfather made them!’

Tim joined the business with his father,
George Stay, at the age of 15. George,
in his day, had originally done a lot of
horse shoeing, but moved to working in
wrought iron, and Tim in his time took
it in a different direction again. “We did
a lot of agricultural work. Farming and

I used to come to the workshop when

explains Will. “The laws about milking

blacksmithing was pretty much hand in

it was in Sandown,” he says, explaining

cows with horns changed – Health and

glove, because any tool they used had to

it moved from Brading to Sandown,

Safety I’d imagine – so they had to get rid

be serviced.”

then moved back. “We used to have a

of them.”

hardware store in Brading, too, that my
Great Aunt used to run.”
W Stay & Son has a continuity of which
few firms, anywhere, can boast. Their
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History frequently runs full circle.

Photos show Tim working with his dad,
“A

equally slight, and bespectacled. But

customer came to me with a photo of

disaster struck when George died when

some railings in Ryde she’d like copied,”

Tim was just 19 years old.

Will goes on. “I nipped up home and

“I was thrown in at the deep end,” he
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