One of the potential issues, that has had me wondering, is the perceived differentiation between London and Hounslow; it is like Solingen (pronounced zolling by the natives incidentally) and Remscheid.
Did the immigrants consider Hounslow as London?
Apparently Greenwich remained active well into the Civil War (did it go beyond?).
Hounslow, a mere dozen miles away, was still essentially rural, so I have always assumed London to mean Greenwich.
Johannes Dell, for example, did his apprenticeship in London and marked his blades as such. This was during his first nine years over here (1640 – '49) and before he moved to Hounslow during the Civil War to fill the spaces left by the Royalist armourers up in Oxford.
The reason I emphasized 'some' of the mills being converted earlier was because surely, no way was Cromwell so stupid as to destroy entirely such a valuable source of high class weaponry; in fact, he had an army permanently barracked on the Heath after the war. Guns…? Yes! But not to the exclusion of fine blades. Again, I mention this because it has, too often, been claimed that Cromwell destroyed all of Hounslow's facilities to make gunpowder. So, was Greenwich able to supply as much as needed and was Hounslow not needed… I doubt it.
So when Munsten and Hoppe couldn't get their Hounslow mills back did they begin working in Greenwich.
One of the reasons I have focused on this issue is because I don't understand why Munsten and Hoppe went to Greenwich. Why didn't they work in one of the mills of Cook, Risby or Kindt? All three were still active and I am certain any of them would have welcomed such smiths. Hence the question: did they lump London and Hounslow together. Also, are their any blades marked 'Greenwich' out there? And when are they dated? Or is the entire output always labelled 'London'? I certainly don't know, so I am fielding the issue to the cognoscenti. I don't actually know anything about blade output from Greenwich, focussing, as everyone does, on the likes of Halder et al.