Shotley Bridge swordmakers

[urbanspaceman]

Bertram's quality marks: [IMG]

[urbanspaceman]

It makes me wonder if perhaps the stars found associated with the Passau Wolf markings are connected?

[urbanspaceman]

What the above now establishes, beyond all speculation, is why the Germans chose Shotley Bridge: it was because of Bertram.
It is also very likely that Bertram was there because of Vinting, whose ancestors (at least one earlier generation anyway) were already there.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

You lost me there Kieth...I remembered reading something about Bertram and him not being traced or something ...to a German origin...(from your pdf details) but your explanation is amazing I have to say... I had been told or read somewhere that there were furnace remains up near Allensford similar I presume to the ones at the Bridge in Shotley.

The grindstone I was told about seems to be just that...for grinding grain...which is why it may well have been seen near the river at the Bridge next to the Grain Mill..(The grain mill which was part of the Swordmakers company set up) That may still be there amongst the trees or some museum...Newcastle or Beamish ...took it away...Anyway its not important now.

It is rather like reading a play by Shakespeare and discovering an entirely missing character but suddenly finding his entire script in another play wrongly applied in that scenario.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

However...Bertram wasn't at Allensford or at least if he was, he was also at Blackhall Mill which is down river from Shotley Bridge; not up apparently... and for which he was famous

I found this~ at https://studylib.net/doc/8013653/the...lished-in-1773

Quote" The Swedish traveller Reinhold Angerstein, who visited Mather’s workshop in 1754, noted that he made ‘all kinds of steel hardware required for a watchmaker’s shop’, specialising in ‘a kind of grooved steel wire for pinions in small pocket watches’. The ‘raw material for the pinion wire’ at the time was ‘Mr Bertram’s Double Shear Steel’ from the North East, not crucible steel. Torsten Berg and Peter Berg (eds), R.R. Angerstein’s illustrated travel diary, 1753-1755: industry in England and Wales from a Swedish perspective(London, 2001), pp. 313-14. William Bertram operated at Blackhall Mill in the Derwent valley, the historic centre for the manufacture of shear steel."Unquote.

I have noted Angerstein before ... Wasn't he at Shotley Bridge for a meeting?

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

and~

History
In the early eighteenth century, Blackhall Mill changed from a mainly rural estate to a steel making village.

The Bertram family operated a steel forge from the early 1700s. It was visited in 1719 and 1754 by Swedish engineers. Both Kalmeter in 1719 and Angerstein in 1754 visited the papermill which was operated by the same millrace as the forge. Angerstein, on his visit in 1754 was studying new methods of industrial technology. At that time, conversion of iron into steel took eighteen days, with most of the time taken by cooling. Profit was sixteen per cent. There is reference to a smelt mill at Blackhall Mill in an indenture of 1773, and Mr. William Bertram of Ryton parish was owner or part owner of the sword factory at Blackhall Mill at the same period. The Blackhall Mill steel forge (later the site of the council school) used power from a dam across the Derwent near Beechgrove Terrace.

Angersteins journey can be traced at https://books.google.com.om/books?id...bridge&f=false which indicates almost every forge and mill in the line of travel and a map can be seen... He indeed visited Shotley Bridge.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Dan Heyford was from Roamley near Pontefract and he supplied Shotley Bridge with steel...according to https://books.google.com.om/books?id...page&q&f=false on page 302.