The edge tool maker

Here and there, the countryside harbours craft industries with a long pedigree that have largely disappeared from urban areas where costs and pressure on space are much greater. Almost unnoticed, they continue to cater for a highly niche market.

There has been a mill for making edge tools in Dunsford since at least the 1820s. It is there because of the water power that originally drove the mill. The wheel now only turns for show but remarkably the business has survived. The Morris family came here in 1931 and took over full running of the firm a few years later. For a while it was part of a larger corporation but since the 1980s has been independent again, and now is in the hands of Richard Morris and his nephew. They are still making the bill hooks and other cutting tools that were once standard equipment for hundreds of thousands of farm workers and country craftsmen but which now are supplied to a much reduced niche market.