Old horseshoes on a country blacksmiths shed

When I first lived in the shire there were many such oddities in folks backyards recalling and even celebrating a lost rural past.
Old railway carriages, purchased from the railways after the Beeching cuts, dotted the landscape housing hens and farmers bits and pieces. Old horse drawn ploughs were proudly displayed in village gardens sporting bright pastel colour schemes which they would never have had in days gone by. Silver and red with green frames. No trace of either loam or rust to be seen.

There were old cast iron wash house cauldrons tarted up in black enamel and oft as not filled with earth and spring bulbs, belying the hard work of the women who had used them to hand wash all those clothes in the good old days before washing machines came on the go.

There were old Fergie tractors which country folk kept around just to start up a few times a year to show the new folk how it was done in the days before the John Deere and the reversible plough.

If you travel round the shire today you will be hard put to see much of this which is why I grab those images as I pass by.