Maybe it has been something to do with the weather this year, for when Mick Merchant was asked recently if he could make a weathervane for a customer, it was the sixth such request in recent months.

But weathervanes are just one of many decorative and practical features produced in his workshop that can be seen in homes and gardens not only in West Oxfordshire, but throughout the Cotswolds and beyond.

Many residences and business premises have been enhanced by the iron entrance gates, railings, balustrades and staircases. An example of an outdoor staircase is at the Bull Hotel in Charlbury, where it adds to the atmosphere of the hotel’s Italian-style terrace.

There are ornamental brackets for hanging flower baskets in various sizes and designs, Victorian-style lamp standards and ironwork well-covers and Mr Merchant has also made a smaller-scale version of the Angel of the North sculpture.

And his work is seen not only in a local setting, but also in period dramas with work for film sets, including iron stocks — now in his own garden — Saxon swords and other props.

Mr Merchant has had his workshop in Hailey, near Witney, for the past three years, after moving from premises in Charlbury. This means he has returned to where his grandfather, Charlie Williams, employed those same skills 35 years ago.

Mr Williams originally came to the area to become head keeper at Cornbury Park. However, there was a tradition in his family of craftmanship in metalwork, and he set up his own smithy in Leafield, where he worked for 40 years, before moving to Hailey.

As the tradition can be traced back through the generations, so too it has moved forward in the three stages of the family who followed Charlie Williams.

Mr Merchant’s father, Ted, was a precision engineer who also took an interest in the work of the smithy and went on to work in other aspects of industrial metalwork. And Mr Merchant’s son, Wayne, has made his own contribution to the family business.

On leaving school, Mr Merchant Snr intended to set out on an apprenticeship in plumbing, but the draw of the family business was too powerful.

“I learned by watching my grandfather. He was the strongest man I have ever known. He was a very likeable man and with the patience of Job,” he explained.

“A day does not go by without me thinking about him.”

Descriptions of the his grandfather’s work recall a very different way of life from that in the 21st century.

“He was a master-shoer of Suffolk Punch heavy horses,” Mr Merchant added.

Those were the days when farming depended so much on the horse and cart, so there was also the work on the waggons to keep the blacksmith busy. This was, too, the time of the steam engine, another important aspect of his working life.

When Mr Merchant set up in business in Charlbury, it was following a period when he had been working as a senior technician in cryogenics.

This stage of his career took him to various locations at home and overseas, working on pipeline installations. He worked with the Royal Navy on aircraft carriers, and for a petrol company involving sub-aqua welding.

Today, just being a blacksmith is not sufficient to make a living, so Mr Merchant has turned his hand to other skills. Among these is stonemasonry, including stone carving, where precision is all-important.

“I have trained myself to work to high standards, and of making things square,” he said.

Some processes are more intricate than others — such as the hand-worked design for a family crest to be set in a pair of entrance gates.

“It is physically impossible to get them absolutely identical — it is not even possible to make two identical scrolls,” Mr Merchant said.

In the late 1990s, he spent time working on many a scroll — 600 in fact. These became part of the decorative work for the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, now the O2 Arena.

But from that very modern building he found himself working on an old house in the Cotswolds where history came to life when a set of diaries written in the 16th century were uncovered.

Following his find, a link was traced with the descendants of the writers who recorded their daily lives, down to details of the weather.

These descendants live in the USA, and Mr Merchant received a letter of grateful thanks from the family.

Today, if anybody is planning to keep their own detailed weather reports, they can be certain the directions of the wind shown by weathervanes made and installed by Mr Merchant can be relied on for accuracy.

Be it the traditional rooster model, a horse and plough, a penny-farthing bicycle, a bi-plane, silhouette of a crocodile, or any other design that Mr Merchant’s customers have chosen, he is precise in its setting.

Each one is set to magnetic North by the use of a well-used mariner’s compass, which he claims is as accurate as you can get.