Smithy from Urzędów

The porch supported by two posts was where horses were shod at Jan Wyrostek's smithy. Carpenter Stanisław Gozdalski built the workshop in 1915 in Bęczyn, on the outskirts of Urzędów. Wyrostek used it from 1915 to 1940.

The building has interlocking timber walls and a porch at its gable end. Its roof is covered with dranice, split aspen boards. A sheltered space in front of the entrance was a characteristic feature of smithies from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The blacksmith owned a three-hectare farm, and his craft provided additional income. Besides shoeing horses and repairing agricultural equipment, he made decorative handles, cockerels, cemetery crosses and metal fittings. His work therefore ranged from repairing tools needed on farms to producing items commissioned for homes and cemeteries.