Volunteers host day of wheel-making at Chedham’s Yard, Wellesbourne

Fire, smoke and applause concluded a day of wheelmaking last Saturday at Chedham’s Yard. Visitors witnessed all stages of the traditional skill of assembling a wooden wheel and then fitting it with a metal hoop - as it would have been done by the Chedham family who set up their business in Wellesbourne 200 years ago.

To start with, visitors saw spokes fitted into the hub, and then the outer rim or ‘felloes’ fitted to the spokes. Following this, a strip of metal was bent into a circle using an old ‘tyre former’. Next, the open ends of the hoop were welded or ‘shut’ in the Victorian forge. The metal hoop was then heated on a bonfire to red hot before being carefully lifted with long tongs and positioned on the wooden wheel clamped to a ‘tyring platform’. Finally, amidst flames from the cartwheel and clouds of smoke, the hot metal hoop was quenched with water so that it shrunk and tightened on the wheel.

This was the first time in several years that the Yard had recreated this almost-forgotten - and dramatic - way of making a wheel. And it was also a first for the volunteers who had to learn the skills.

Derek Apps who led the event explained: “We have most of the old tools and equipment on site needed to make a wheel, though none of us had actually done it before. But after spending several weeks researching and reading about the techniques and some trial and error, we felt we could give it a go.

‘On the day, it worked very well but we clearly do not have the skills of the wheelwrights and blacksmiths of the past.”