Celtic sword: Bamborough
The science of 'billet welding' that had begun centuries bCe with local Celts, continued to be used in Briton by Vikings, then Anglo-Saxons, until 1066.
(Bamborough Castle holds just such a blade: found in its grounds in 1960 and made of six strands of billet welded metal dating to c.600Ce.)
It appears to me (and I am asking for correction or corroboration here), that after the arrival of the Normans, we lost the art of forging good blades, until eventually, King Henry VIII set up the Greenwich Armoury and staffed it with (secretive!) outsiders.
What happened? Does anybody know?
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