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Old 21st September 2017, 08:32 PM   #12
urbanspaceman
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Join Date: Sep 2017
Location: Tyneside. North-East England
Posts: 480
Default Begin at the start

Hello Folks. You've got me off to a splendid start; I only hope my notes have enough order to allow my answering your questions. So, beginning at the start with those 'spurious' details Ibrahiim asked about, as I feel they are universally misused:
there is conclusive evidence that there were Germans in the immediate neighbourhood at least sixty years earlier, for the first legible entry in the oldest Ebchester register is of the following: “Eleanor, the daughter of Matthias Wrightson Oley, baptised 1628.”
From: Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend. Vol II, No. 15. May 1888.

I'm afraid the chronicler was over excited by this piece of evidence and didn't examine it more closely (given the date, he may well have needed decent spectacles) as it isn't 'Oley' but an abbreviation denominating a church position: cl lic. which he had believed was ollie. Matthias Wrightson was curate at that church.
A great pity, as it had given me a reason for the choice of location because, let's face it, there's nothing at Shotley Bridge that can't be found at hundreds of alternate locations around the UK and, equally, probably far better known. So I had to start again and try to figure out why SB.
There are two names that I believe are responsible for the choice of location: Bertrams and Vintings. I further understand that they were well versed in iron ore mining and smelting due to their lineage – which I have yet to establish in fact, but my working hypothesis is that they are descended from the "ingenious artisans (whom 'Humphries and Shute' brought over when the Charter of the Mines Royal was granted to them in 1565) at the head of twenty foreign labourers. They had exclusive patents to dig and search for various metals and to refine the same in England and Ireland; and that three years afterwards, the charter was extended when the Duke of Norfolk and others were added to the governors and the whole was styled “The Society of the Mineral and Battery Works."
From: Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend. Vol II, No. 15. May 1888.

I've got to find out where these chaps came from – and why; although iron ore mining and smelting had been going on in the Derwent valley since BCE, and would become the biggest in Europe with the arrival of Sir Ambrose Crowley.

Then, having lost my idealised beginning, I lost my perfect ending, because (see Robert Wilkinson-Latham) there is definitely no connection between Mohll of SB and Mole of Birmingham; as much as everyone up here would like to believe that the SB enterprise ultimately culminated in Wilkinson's Sword. The fact that we had a WS factory up here on Tyneside, and that they had SB swords in a glass case in their reception, lent weight to the fallacy but, sadly, fallacy it is.

I am going to throw two facts into the pot now:
firstly, The Earl of Derwentwater was the local aristo, the big job around those parts, and he was a notorious Jacobite: lost his head in the Tower as a result.
Secondly, in 1815, during the Napoleonic wars, much diligent searching was going on looking for infiltrators, and during a search of Danby Castle (on the North York Moors) they found a chest hidden in a secret compartment in a chimney: a chest of swords apparently intended for the Jacobite army with blades made in Shotley Bridge.
Add to the above the business of Mohll's possession of chests of blades on his arrest, when his ship was searched for Scottish and Irish soldiers (i.e. Jacobites) and I am coming to the conclusion that Hollow Blades was a ruse based on the prevailing popular fashion of the time to disguise the real earner i.e. military blades.
I need to look into the lives of the two Londoners who teamed up with John Sanford from Newcastle and Johannes Dell (Johnathan bell) of Hounslow fame, to form the first enterprise at SB in 1685 with Peter Henekels and Heinrich Hoppe. Remember, these chaps moved to Oxford with their king – Charles Ist.

Here's something I'm stuck on that maybe someone can clarify: does anyone know who – in England – invented this machine?
1830-3 the invention of a roll-forge for blades which Mr. Fritz Weyersberg saw in England. He then purchased the patent and the forge was introduced to and implemented in Solingen. With this machine, which still exists today at WKC, he was able to forge multiple blades in a short space in time.
Tbc.
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