Banding steel car wheels have been a large part of Usher Engineering for over 10 years, but looking back in the Usher family history our ancesters were also "banding wheels" but not in the way you are thinking! My Great Grandmother Agnes Jenvey-Clarke was part of a very large family of Jenvey's from Brockenhurst in Hampshire England and with a long line of ancestors who were Wheelwrights, Blacksmiths and Carpenters. The Jenvey family are known to have played an important part in the village by running a thriving wheelwrights business, which was the only one for miles around. After a wooden wheel was made an iron tyre was then placed around the wheel to reduce wear. The wooden wheel was clamped on top of the wheelbed, which would have been on the ground, and the metal tyre was heated in the forge until red hot. Two men held the tyre with tongs and placed it around the circumference of the wheel. The resulting flames were then doused with cold water to shrink the metal tyre onto the rim.

Ancestry records show Jenvey wheelwrights were Peter Jenvey (1746-1826), Thomas Jenvey (1755-1812), Jesse Jenvey Smith (1851-1935), Sidney Jenvey (1900-1951)

(Below right hand image) This area of land, now known as Perkins' Piece, was purchased by John Perkins in 1951 and given to Boldre Parish in 1977. After circa 1715 it became the home of the Jenvey family, whose cottage, sheds and forge stood on this site. The last member of the Jenvey family to trade here as a wheelwright was Sidney Jenvey, who died in 1951.

(Below left hand image) Jesse Jenvey Smith at his Wheelwrights workshop.

Information by kind permission of:

http://www.boldreparishhistoricalsociety.co.uk/articles.shtml