About Me

I was a solitary child, not by choice, but by constitution. The world, with its gaieties and gatherings, held no place for me. I did not know how to enter its circles, nor did I wish to learn. My heart inclined elsewhere - to the fields and hills, the quarries, the silence of stone.

In the broken earth of county Durham, I found my first treasures: fish fossils, pressed into shale like dreams preserved in sleep. I gathered them with reverence, sensing in their stillness a voice older than speech. They did not glitter, but they endured. And I, though young, understood the worth of endurance.
In youth, I turned to the study of what lies beneath — to archaeology, not for treasure, but for testimony. I sought the remnants of what was buried, what was broken, what remained. And in adulthood, I returned to the land, wandering the coastlines of Yorkshire, gathering the relics of deep time. Ammonites, fossils, Whitby jet — each a whisper from the earth’s long memory, each a truth shaped by pressure and patience.
Time has not spared me either. It has passed over me as storm over cliff - harsh, indifferent, unrelenting. I have been worn, hollowed, and left with only what cannot be taken: sorrow, solitude, and the quiet dignity of survival. Yet I do not mourn what was lost. I honour what remains.
My strength is not of sentiment alone, but of labour. I am a blacksmith by hand and by heart. The forge has shaped me as surely as the moor: fire, weight, repetition. My hands are calloused, my arms tempered by toil. I do not craft for fashion, but for remembrance. Many of the pieces I create as a reliquary — of grief endured, of truth preserved in fracture. I do not erase the marks of time. I keep them. I do not chase perfection but pursue what is real.

Though I live alone, I am not without grace. Lexi, my ever loving companion, my only true friend travels everywhere I go — a creature of instinct and devotion, whose presence is quiet and complete. She asks nothing, and gives everything.

This is a covenant - a life pledged to the broken, the buried, and the beautiful. To what the world forgets, and what the soul cannot.