In 2024 Hector Cole was awarded the most prestigious Gold medal from the city livery company, The Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths and now his daughter Melissa has been awarded the silver medal, making the father-and-daughter blacksmiths the first to achieve such high honours. And only the second silver medal to have been awarded to a women blacksmith since the formation of the livery company. History has been made.
Hector’s gold medal is only one of seven ever awarded in the livery company’s six hundred year history. He was also awarded an MBE in 2015 for services to Heritage Crafts and is a well-known figure in and around Malmesbury, Wiltshire. He is known for his historical and archaeological ironwork, swords, and arrowheads, with work in museums and private collections across the world. As a teacher of metalwork at Malmesbury School, he went on to develop his ironwork business, with gate commissions for Highgrove House and Charlton Park, accessible to the public.
Hector has inspired a generation of blacksmiths and continues to visit blacksmithing events and colleges as a guest speaker, awards assessor and judge across blacksmithing competitions.
He has published a book, ‘The Manufacture of Arrowheads in the Medieval Period’, based on his decades of experience and research in this specialist field.
His daughter, Melissa, trained with him in the Little Somerford forge and moved to her own workshop in 2001. She is now based in the Pewsey Vale, Wiltshire, and has been designing and making contemporary ironwork for the last 30 years, as seen in public spaces in Malmesbury, Chippenham, Oxford and Swindon. Winning the Wiltshire Life Individual Arts, Culture & Music Award in 2020 for the Moravian Star Sculpture in Malmesbury, Melissa is also a judge for blacksmithing competitions, Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths awards assessor and teaches blacksmithing and sculpture from her own forge. Specialising in SEN teaching recently, she is now working on a book about artist blacksmithing that will share tips and techniques for anyone wanting to learn more about this craft.
Recently Melissa was chosen by The Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths to make a unique gift for Queen Elizabeth II to celebrate and commemorate the Platinum Jubilee. This was a beautiful birdbath, the design of which was personally apporoved by Queen Elizabeth II and now sits in its permanent home in the Volerie Garden of Little Banqueting House near Barge Walk at Hampton Court Palace.
Whilst being an outstanding Blacksmith Melissa is also an accomplished artist. One of the high points of the annual Marlborough Open Studios programme over the summer is a visit to Melissa’s workshop in the Pewsey Vale where the range of her original, technical but wonderfully artistic designs can be seen – and purchased.
The adjacent image is of ‘White Gates’, designed, created and installed several years ago
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