S.H. Hope & Son (Blacksmith)

The business of blacksmithing was extremely important both for shoeing horses and building and repairing coaches, sulkies, drays, and wagons. The trade was carried on from the earliest times and by circa 1894-1895 John O’Connor, A.E. Kenworthy and Samuel Henry Hope were operating in Mingenew.
Wagons built at the Hope family business were well known and distributed throughout the pastoral areas-even to the Kimberley. Their expertise as wheelwrights were such that teamsters brought plant back to Mingenew for repairs annually. The Hope’s anvil, tyreing machine and shrinking plate are displayed at the museum. Their business also included coffin making and they conducted undertaking duties for three generations, with Charles and Gordon operating as Hope Bros. from 1909 until shortly after the second world war.
The blacksmith shop [near the Mingenew Spring] included a foundry where some of the early ‘strippers’ were made preceding the modern harvesters. One of the first motor cars to herald the age of motorised transport, was owned in 1913 by the Darlot Bros. of Urella; gradually the trade of blacksmiths was displaced by modernised Garages.
The Mingenew Shire Works Depot is now located on this site.