Hounslow Sword Factory

Jim McDougall · 15th February 2024, 07:36 PM

Keith (Urbanspaceman), Peter and I did extensive research in 2017 on English sword makers of the 17th century
primarily on SHOTLEY BRIDGE which was the later culmination of the German blade production concept begun with the Hounslow shops.

That work, discussed extensively in 2017 onward on the thread SWORDMAKERS OF SHOTLEY BRIDGE (by Urbanspaceman) held profuse notes, cites, titles and references on Shotley Bridge and associated material, including HOUNSLOW, so Im surprised that this did not come up in the SEARCH function here.

While the work on Shotley Bridge resulted in the outstanding book on this by Keith Fisher, "THE CROWN AND CROSSED SWORDS: GERMAN SWORDSMITHS IN SHOTLEY BRIDGE", with Peter Hudson and myself as co authors.....does contain references to Hounslow, it is not of course focused on it.

Hounslow faltered during the English Civil Wars and was captured by Oliver Cromwell, who turned many of the mills to powder production, with many of the smiths going to Oxford with the Royalists, some of the Germans returned to Germany.

There is not as far as I know, a single BOOK on Hounslow, but there are many references which have full chapters, and there are some pamphlets and articles. This topic is pretty esoteric it seems, and even the thread mentioned did not bring a great deal of interest or 'traffic' so it is indeed heartening to see this interest.

The thread I mentioned is actually a book in itself, and thoroughly filled with titles from the corpus of material on these subjects.
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...shotley+bridge

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15th February 2024, 07:36 PM	#3
Jim McDougall Arms Historian Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Route 66 Posts: 10,295	Keith (Urbanspaceman), Peter and I did extensive research in 2017 on English sword makers of the 17th century primarily on SHOTLEY BRIDGE which was the later culmination of the German blade production concept begun with the Hounslow shops. That work, discussed extensively in 2017 onward on the thread SWORDMAKERS OF SHOTLEY BRIDGE (by Urbanspaceman) held profuse notes, cites, titles and references on Shotley Bridge and associated material, including HOUNSLOW, so Im surprised that this did not come up in the SEARCH function here. While the work on Shotley Bridge resulted in the outstanding book on this by Keith Fisher, "THE CROWN AND CROSSED SWORDS: GERMAN SWORDSMITHS IN SHOTLEY BRIDGE", with Peter Hudson and myself as co authors.....does contain references to Hounslow, it is not of course focused on it. Hounslow faltered during the English Civil Wars and was captured by Oliver Cromwell, who turned many of the mills to powder production, with many of the smiths going to Oxford with the Royalists, some of the Germans returned to Germany. There is not as far as I know, a single BOOK on Hounslow, but there are many references which have full chapters, and there are some pamphlets and articles. This topic is pretty esoteric it seems, and even the thread mentioned did not bring a great deal of interest or 'traffic' so it is indeed heartening to see this interest. The thread I mentioned is actually a book in itself, and thoroughly filled with titles from the corpus of material on these subjects. http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...shotley+bridge