Shotley Bridge swordmakers

[Hotspur]

That reads as a decent novel Show me the money!

Cheers

GC

[urbanspaceman]

Yes, the money!
There are three things going-on here on Tyneside:
one, I'm trying to compile the definitive account of the SB swordmakers;
two, there is a plan afoot to create a permanent display/exhibition/attraction in Shotley Bridge;
three, a novelist is setting a story around the Solingen immigrants.
Actually, four things:
a local heritage-memories/local-history lecturer is planning a new program based on the - yes, you've guessed it - SB swordmakers.
Naturally, where two women and one county council are involved, guess who is doing all the donkey-work?
That's not true really.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

That is quite an amazing development Keith.

I agree to much of your reasons why Shotley was not supplying the Jacobites although it is a protracted group who also seeded much of the border riever activity or at least the Moss Troopers who were another group on the border lands very much on the Durham Northumberland doorstep.

Generally the Shotley people will have wanted to retain their heads! and with Newcastle bristling with troops they certainly had to keep their heads down.

I think the smuggling is another league and seen as semi allowable and in the case of the Shotley team they got away with that by having people in high places... I also suspect the ruse of the hollow blades was half myth and half true since the word "fuller" before 1850 was "hollow". A sort of deliberate subterfuge that fitted the mix-up nicely.

In the situation of what was stamped on which blades I have to note that Shotley did not use the bushy tail fox and that was the sole domain of Birmingham although it may possibly have become mixed up in a number of blades out of Hounslow although if evidence is available I would be ready to concede it may have been used elsewhere...or traded. Usually it was with the addition of SH stamped in the body of the Fox; Samuel Harvey Snr or his son Samuel...

Shotley Bridge used the hammered and chiseled Passau Wolf in stick form either applied there or on smuggled Solingen blades or both.

I say this with the proviso that anything can happen in this story and I am ready to believe what transpires ! The Duck and Crossed Sausages even !!

[urbanspaceman]

I've just had a thought regarding the arrival of Richard Oley in Birmingham in 1724 and the apparent lack of connection between the Shotley Bridge Mohll and the Brummie Mole.
Is it possible that it was Oley who became Mole? It would explain the lack of evidence linking the two Mohll/Moles. Richard Oley may well have had his name corrupted by local accents, vernacular and domesticities and ended up with Mole. Just a thought.
Any Brummies reading this want a genealogical endeavour to pursue... I doubt it.

[Hotspur]

Any Brummies reading this want a genealogical endeavour to pursue... I doubt it.

Show me the money! I thought this was your baby.

The British History Online link and a bit of plumbing the depths might yield information. On the other hand, a lot of genealogical research these days is pay for play. I have done work (gratis) for some threads here and continue to do so but it might be some years before your questions re Oley might hit the bottom of a very long list of things to do. If I find a family tree for you this weekend, you owe me. Seriously.


A slip of the tongue omitting an M to come up with Ole' is kind of hard in any accent, as one has a consonant. You seem to be concentrating on the wildest explanations possible instead of digging deeper on a topic (such as early hollow ground blades).

Time permitted lad, I'll take a look at your latest request (to do your project).

Take my surname of Cleeton and explain how that could be somehow be written or associated with Eaton. Cleaton, Cleoton and say, the Clee hills outside of Cleeton-St Mary. Or perhaps the manor of Cleoton or Cletune now underwater off Skipsea (1066 and all that). Could any be be mistaken as originally lacking a consonant? Back to the Halstatt era and the Black Sea with the current surname Kleeman. Always a consonant.


Cheers

GC

ha, in the first five minutes Oliey (not on Ancestry.com)

[Hotspur]

This isn't your's is it?
http://www.exodus2013.co.uk/the-shot...e-swordmakers/

Note the date 1628 and fill in some blanks.

Cheers

GC

[urbanspaceman]

Hi Glenn. Please don't concern yourself with my fanciful theory; I agree that the consonant is the clincher, but I was just hoping for a break. They are very keen, over here, to retain the story about Mohll becoming Mole at whatever cost.
With regard to that 'Exodus' article: no, it is yet another catalogue of fallacies and falsehoods. The 19th C. chronicler in question (married to an Oley) misread the entry in the parish register which admittedly was faint, but it said Cler - for Cleric - not Oley.
The Shotley Bridge endeavour began in 1685.
The Vintings/Vintons were mining and forging iron and lead around there, certainly since the 1500s; and local historians will tell you that there were forges going back to before the Christian era.
We did have Germans working in the glass industry in Newcastle itself - primarily the Tyzacks - a good hundred years earlier, but Shotley Bridge sword-making with the Solingen immigrants didn't start till 1687.
BTW. You're not from Birmingham, are you?