The Village Smithy @museum.de

F: That's what is must have sounded like in the past – on every large estate. A blacksmith's shop was essential for many everyday jobs: not just for making horseshoes and shoeing horses. The manor smithies also made branding irons, forged scythes and repaired tools.

The area behind the house could be used to store the peat coal that was required in large quantities. And the animals would have been secured to the beam in front of the house. That was where the horses were shoed and the cows were branded with their owners' mark.

M: Feel free to look inside the forge. You'll find the branding irons hanging just above the door on the left: they are forged rods with the mark of the respective owner at one end. When they were heated in the forge fire, they left painless brands on the animals' hooves or horns. That meant each farmer could recognise his own livestock in the village meadow.

F: The oldest parts of the brick forge are said to date back to the 15th century. The forge has stood here in the Open Air Museum grounds since 2004 and provides information about this ancient and important craft. Although the bellows is now operated by electricity, the many tongs, hammers, axles, snaffles and yokes all hark back to times long past.

M: Every year for Bad Zwischenahn Week, the fire is lit and the forge once again comes to life. And after a wedding has taken place at the Ammerland Farmhouse, the newly weds like to come over to the forge, where, to much applause from the wedding party, the groom will take a hammer to his first horseshoe.