Pieces of Silsden's nail-making history have been unearth-ed in a garden.

Four stone blocks which once housed anvils for the manufacture of nails were found in a garden in Stirling Street. The stones, which have holes in where the anvils would have fitted, were discovered as the garden was being cleared for a car parking space.

Now the stones could be incorporated into a millennium water feature in the town's memorial gardens.

The first mention of nail-making in Silsden is found in the parish register of Kildwick-in-Craven, which records a William West, nailmaker at Silsden in 1761. It seems likely that he brought the industry from elsewhere. Others took to making nails and, later, clog irons. There were around ten smithies in Silsden.

In the small farms around the town farmers made nails when they could spare time from farming. .

But the industry was always a domestic or semi-domestic type, and after about 1850 it was difficult to compete with mass-production methods. One by one the Silsden smithies were driven out of business, and nail-making ceased in about 1916. Early 1950 saw the last three clog-iron makers at work. In August of the same year their work came to an end and the last smithy closed.

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