The Ahe Hammer is located in the valley of the Schwarze Ahe. The single-storey quarry stone building under the shallow pitched roof was built by the Brünninghaus family of entrepreneurs. The business of the family, whose surname comes from the Brüninghausen estate near Lüdenscheid, referred both to the extraction of iron ore in the immediate vicinity and to the smelting of this ore in their own furnaces.
In a directory dating from about 1767, the owners, reidemeisters and workers of various osemund hammers are named. For the Ahe-Hammer there is the following information: Reidemeister: Peter Brüninghaus, Peter Wilhelm Geck, Peter Rentrop. Required: 2 blacksmiths, 1 hammer retainer, 1 apprentice boy. Available: Blacksmith: Christian Ahman (41 yrs.) Herm. Died. Scharpe (33 y.); hammer restrainer: Herm. Died. vom Hofe (27 y.). Missing: 1 apprentice.
The forge was rebuilt in 1883/84 to its present form. Until 1941 the pig iron was heated in hearth fires and worked on two so-called tail hammers. The well-known Osemunde iron was produced.
The two hammers (90 kg and 160 kg) were driven by the water of the Ahe, which was dammed in a hammer pond. One water wheel was responsible for driving the hammers, the second for generating wind at the two forge fires.
This hammer forge was temporarily shut down before it was renovated in 1950 and since then it has been open to an interested public for demonstrations with all its former equipment, watercourses and drives.
Contact , guided tours and further information
Stiftung Industriedenkmalpflege und Geschichtskultur
Tel. 0231-931122-0
Text source © Foundation for the Preservation of Industrial Monuments and Historical Culture
All information without guarantee!