Shotley Bridge swordmakers

[urbanspaceman]

Hi Brian. Hope you haven't dropped any glass on your foot/feet.
I know you are too busy to start reading my book but I will send you a copy anyway as amongst other questions you have asked there are details/answers of the Bertram saga.
Pretty much everything that can be known about this remarkable family is in my book... obviously, because along with the Vintons we see the true beginnings of the Shotley Bridge endeavour - many years before Johannes Dell and his mates arrived in 1685.
Just a teaser: his name was actually Berhtraban which is old High German; he was born and raised in Remscheid, which was the iron and steel working area of the Wupper Valley.
His output from his Derwent Valley forge(s): Allensford, Blackhall and Derwentcote, was known as 'Newcastle Steel' and was universally acknowledged as the world's finest. (see picture)
Incidentally, the use of the word 'shear' in describing steel derives from the Yorkshire textile industry's use for cutting-tool standards.

[Brian Moffatt]

Aye Keith...
So I should start looking for "Bertram era" swords on my travels....?
Be interesting to try and work out the blade construction...

Do they have anything to do with the Bertrams up by Ford?
Always thought of that branch as "reiving stock" with that "Richard Nixon" look that characterises the Armstrongs.
Mate of mine from my London days....long lost touch with, was one of those Bertrams...

Amazing how these genes pass down.. often folk wonder how I guess their surnames just by looking at them... Fosters in particular....
Sorry... I'm rambling..still got the dreaded "brain (Brian) fog" post Covid.
All the Best,
Brian

[Peter Hudson]

Keith I think a visit to The Hawick museum is in order...

Oh by the way I SEE A number of specialists on the web now admitting that the running Fox was applied by Shotley Bridge Sword Makers... even The British Museum!
I focuss on Bewick......and from his expertise as the author of World Quadrupeds and as he was apprenticed to Oley as an engraver ...and how amazing some of the sword blade animals were ...On looking at Bewick s sketches of Foxes and in fact Dogs it occured to me that this could be where it all started for the Shotley Bridge Running Fox or what we know it as The Bushy Tailed Fox in a bid to differentiate from The Passau Wolf.

Reference your post earlier on the glassware done by Mary Beilby thinking again about the Bewick potential as the originator of Oleys Running Fox..

I have to say that these days finding any reference of Bewick working with Oley at SB is not easy as I think much of the notes on that subject have been erased.. Anyway after about an hour searching I found a short burst at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6007...-h/60075-h.htm at volume 4. but nothing substantial...

There are a few interesting names that appear including the Names of both Belbys and both were in glass production/ decoration as per your post on the glasswork above. In his memoirs Bewick mentions William Harvey an Engraver apprentice of Bewick but who went off to Birmingham ...and I wondered if that was the William Harvey relative of Samuel Harvey SH of Swordmaking fame ....?? The plot thickens...I placed the William Harvey letterhead earlier in this thread and that proves he was a sword maker etc etc..SEE post 53.

Peter Hudson.