Hounslow Sword Factory

Triarii · 14th February 2024, 03:43 PM

Afternoon all.

I have been attempting to read up on the Hounslow sword works. I can find fragmentary articles, with the longest being a rather good one which is a part of an article by John F. Hayward on MyArmoury.com (here: http://myarmoury.com/feature_engswords.html)

Does anyone know if a) the Hounslow article or b) the whole article is available anywhere else - what publication was it drawn from? I'd like to reference it properly in some work on the so-called New Model Army.

Are there any other longer articles on Hounslow available anywhere?

Found it - Hayward John F. "English Swords 1600–1650." Arms and Armor Annual (1973), pp. 142–61

fernando · 15th February 2024, 08:08 PM

I am surprised that members well qualified on the Hounslow subject don't come around to help !

.

Jim McDougall · 15th February 2024, 08:36 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

urbanspaceman · 18th February 2024, 09:59 PM

Hello folks. Stuart Mowbray did some extensive research for Bezdek's book on English swords and swordmakers.
During my research on SB I came across lots of bits and pieces here and there. I'm out of the country at present so I do not have access to my notes.
Who arrived in 1629; who stayed; who went with the king to Oxford; who returned; what happened to the various mills and their owners; when did it actually finally end (1685) and some other stuff all came to light.
It was/is my intention to collect all this detail into a bundle and add it to the addenda of my book on SB; it is already almost as big an addenda as the principle story because - again - I wanted to package it all into one bundle.
My SB book can be found online and as a free pdf download (16mb) on www.shotleybridgevillagetrust.com along with details of how to obtain a hard copy at cost price direct from the printer.
Re. Hounslow: watch this space... I'll be back!

Triarii · 23rd February 2024, 12:09 PM

Thankyou Fernando and Jim - and urbanspaceman.

Thanks to your prompts I've now re-found the pdf of the book by Kevin which covers Hounslow.

I think the summary of my interest is;

How reliant on imported blades was England (seems to be very - certainly of my ECW era collection, of those where the blade can be attributed, German blades make up 50% of my collection and the vast majority of those with identified makers names or nations).
How much of that dependency was intended to be addressed by Hounslow or was actually addressed by Hounslow.
Did Hounslow produce blades only (the London Cutlers Company seemed to spend its time hilting imported blades for example).
Did Hounslow specialise in any way at all (discounting the so-called 'Hounslow Hangers' which I think are misnamed and noting that Hounslow blades can be found on rapiers, hangers, Irish hilts and other backswords).

Jim McDougall · 23rd February 2024, 04:31 PM

Thank you for itemizing your specific areas of interest, so that they can be addressed more accurately.
1. England, just as most of Europe was highly reliant on Germany for blades, however it was not just Solingen, which was the main center for centuries.
It is important to know the concept of CUTLERY, which prevailed in England and Scotland.
A cutler is an artisan who assembles swords to essentially be supplied or retailed, using acquired blades, primarily imported or by other means. They fashioned hilts according to locally preferred styles and current fashion.

A good case in point is Scotland, where the famed basket hilt broadsword has always been the traditional icon of the Highlander, but of course was extant in Lowland variation as well. While the basket hilt of course existed in form much earlier in Europe and diffused into England, its development is fascinating and beautifully detailed in "The Early Basket Hilt in Britain" by Claude Blair, in "Scottish Weapons and Fortifications" (ed. David Caldwell, 1981).

There are virtually NO Scottish basket hilts with blades other than from Germany , and the ubiquitous blades with the name ANDREA FERARA (of course spuriously applied) were the virtual hallmark of Scottish basket hilts.
There were NO Scottish bladesmiths (though there are cases where there might have been few made locally, possibly by Allen).

In Scotland, the men assembling these swords and producing the hilts were sword 'slippers' essentially cutlers. There were many of these of course, and over the years all over Scotland.
It was much the same throughout Great Britain, and with cutlers they often included other trades in their repertoire, mostly as jewelers, metal workers, even toy makers.

There were virtually NO bladesmiths in Scotland, England, Ireland or Wales, save a few isolated exceptions who have basically been unrecorded in most accounts.

Most of the blades found on British swords will be German, from Solingen primarily, however early blades from Passau and Munich are also likely..
Many blades may have Styrian origin (Austria) and as always the blades of Toledo and Italy were highly regarded.
This is why they were so highly copied by Solingen and Munich (among the key blade centers, which are of course numerous others).

Remember that swords were often rehilted through their working lives, which often of course covered generations if not centuries. Blades were expendable and often damaged or broken, so obviously refurbishing used different options of blades. They were traditional and heirloom, so often much older blades occur in more currently fashioned hilts.

There is no concise or easy answer to the distribution of sword blades in a categorized area it depends on many mitigating factors.

2/3 . Hounslow was essentially an isolated enterprise which was basically experimental in hoping to develop an English blade making center with skilled smiths trained by the famed German makers. It remained isolated in its production while the overall assembly of swords throughout Britain remained in its traditional reliance on local cutlers.
Important to note..........there was never any commercial exportation of swords FROM Britain. Swords from British sources in other spheres were entirely from colonial circumstances.

Another important note the LONDON CUTLERS COMPANY by definition was a guild of CUTLERS who of course assembled swords using blades from other sources (mostly German).
It is unclear how many blades were actually produced in Hounslow, however clearly there are blades inscribed with the Hounslow name and inscribed by makers who are among the German makers known there. Actually it seems that the larger volume of swords produced in Hounslow used the 'salting' of blades primarily from German sources (mostly Solingen).

The reason Hounslow was chosen as a location was for the river where mills could provide the water power for mills, and most important, it was OUTSIDE the geographic jurisdiction of the London Cutlers Company. The mysterious Benjamin Stone was an entrepreneur who capitalized on the desires of Charles I to bring in German makers hopefully to AVOID reliance on German imports.
This concept had been used earlier by Henry VIII, who brought German armorers to Greenwich to augment his armor making enterprises.

4. Hounslow does seem to have had favored forms, however these were locally favored forms of the period not necessarily exclusive to there.
Keep in mind there were many individual shops and makers, not one sprawling factory and they operated independently.
The notion of a Hounslow 'school' of hilt form evolved as usual from the popular thoughts of collectors who sensationalized the character of some of the hilt forms directly associated with Hounslow. There was no 'standard' Hounslow form hilt but the distinctive hilts of the hangers seems well established.

When Hounslow was taken over by Cromwell during the Civil Wars, many of the smiths went to Oxford with the Royalists, and most of Hounslows mills were repurposed to powder production. It does seem that so called 'mortuary' swords (another collectors term) were made there as well as some rapiers, but predominating were hangers, as discussed.

Picture 1 a Hounslow hanger
2 'mortuary', typical English half basket attributed to Hounslow with ANDREA FERARA blade, German blades clearly were a
strong component of Hounslow produced blades.

I am delighted to see someone take an interest in the Hounslow topic, and see you have read one of the articles on this. There are of course many, but there has never been a neatly packaged book with all the details of this tremendously under researched subject. Actually over many years of research I was able to find numerous brief articles, but these are quite esoteric and had to be searched extensively to locate.

Peter Hudson · 25th February 2024, 12:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Triarii

Thankyou Fernando and Jim - and urbanspaceman.

Thanks to your prompts I've now re-found the pdf of the book by Kevin which covers Hounslow.

I think the summary of my interest is;

How reliant on imported blades was England (seems to be very - certainly of my ECW era collection, of those where the blade can be attributed, German blades make up 50% of my collection and the vast majority of those with identified makers names or nations).
How much of that dependency was intended to be addressed by Hounslow or was actually addressed by Hounslow.
Did Hounslow produce blades only (the London Cutlers Company seemed to spend its time hilting imported blades for example).
Did Hounslow specialise in any way at all (discounting the so-called 'Hounslow Hangers' which I think are misnamed and noting that Hounslow blades can be found on rapiers, hangers, Irish hilts and other backswords).

Hello Triarii, Until Keith produced his book on the Shotley Bridge Swordmakers I didnt really know much about the English involvement in sword making either there or in Hounslow...That was rather a shock to me since I was actually born in Shotley Bridge!!!... but I soon caught up with proceedings and supported by Jims incredible knowledge on all things swords and Keith whose work on the SB Swordmakers is brilliant...I got quickly in step with proceedings although I have to say I found information hard to come by especially on Hounslow...and it is fair to say getting a grip on Hounslow is key to understanding Shotley Bridge...and without those two cornerstones Birmingham, London and Sheffield make no sense; thus they are foundations vital to understanding English Swords....

As Jim was saying books on the subject of Hounslow are few n' far between...so you need to hit all the buttons you can on anything about Hounslow on the web...and scoop up any details you find on museums and references you can..Use everything available at Forum Library and if in doubt just ask...The PM system is good for that...You might want to develope a hit list of details you want to focuss upon but I suggest you just vacuum up all the information you can and once that is all catalogued then decide what is important ... and I bet by then your priorities will have changed...
Regards,
Peter Hudson.

14th February 2024, 03:43 PM	#1
Triarii Member Join Date: Oct 2021 Location: Bristol Posts: 113	Hounslow Sword Factory Afternoon all. I have been attempting to read up on the Hounslow sword works. I can find fragmentary articles, with the longest being a rather good one which is a part of an article by John F. Hayward on MyArmoury.com (here: http://myarmoury.com/feature_engswords.html) Does anyone know if a) the Hounslow article or b) the whole article is available anywhere else - what publication was it drawn from? I'd like to reference it properly in some work on the so-called New Model Army. Are there any other longer articles on Hounslow available anywhere? Found it - Hayward John F. "English Swords 1600–1650." Arms and Armor Annual (1973), pp. 142–61

18th February 2024, 09:59 PM	#4
urbanspaceman Member Join Date: Sep 2017 Location: Tyneside. North-East England Posts: 532	Hounslow Hello folks. Stuart Mowbray did some extensive research for Bezdek's book on English swords and swordmakers. During my research on SB I came across lots of bits and pieces here and there. I'm out of the country at present so I do not have access to my notes. Who arrived in 1629; who stayed; who went with the king to Oxford; who returned; what happened to the various mills and their owners; when did it actually finally end (1685) and some other stuff all came to light. It was/is my intention to collect all this detail into a bundle and add it to the addenda of my book on SB; it is already almost as big an addenda as the principle story because - again - I wanted to package it all into one bundle. My SB book can be found online and as a free pdf download (16mb) on www.shotleybridgevillagetrust.com along with details of how to obtain a hard copy at cost price direct from the printer. Re. Hounslow: watch this space... I'll be back!

23rd February 2024, 12:09 PM	#5
Triarii Member Join Date: Oct 2021 Location: Bristol Posts: 113	Thankyou Fernando and Jim - and urbanspaceman. Thanks to your prompts I've now re-found the pdf of the book by Kevin which covers Hounslow. I think the summary of my interest is; How reliant on imported blades was England (seems to be very - certainly of my ECW era collection, of those where the blade can be attributed, German blades make up 50% of my collection and the vast majority of those with identified makers names or nations). How much of that dependency was intended to be addressed by Hounslow or was actually addressed by Hounslow. Did Hounslow produce blades only (the London Cutlers Company seemed to spend its time hilting imported blades for example). Did Hounslow specialise in any way at all (discounting the so-called 'Hounslow Hangers' which I think are misnamed and noting that Hounslow blades can be found on rapiers, hangers, Irish hilts and other backswords).

23rd February 2024, 04:31 PM	#6
Jim McDougall Arms Historian Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Route 66 Posts: 9,945	Thank you for itemizing your specific areas of interest, so that they can be addressed more accurately. 1. England, just as most of Europe was highly reliant on Germany for blades, however it was not just Solingen, which was the main center for centuries. It is important to know the concept of CUTLERY, which prevailed in England and Scotland. A cutler is an artisan who assembles swords to essentially be supplied or retailed, using acquired blades, primarily imported or by other means. They fashioned hilts according to locally preferred styles and current fashion. A good case in point is Scotland, where the famed basket hilt broadsword has always been the traditional icon of the Highlander, but of course was extant in Lowland variation as well. While the basket hilt of course existed in form much earlier in Europe and diffused into England, its development is fascinating and beautifully detailed in "The Early Basket Hilt in Britain" by Claude Blair, in "Scottish Weapons and Fortifications" (ed. David Caldwell, 1981). There are virtually NO Scottish basket hilts with blades other than from Germany , and the ubiquitous blades with the name ANDREA FERARA (of course spuriously applied) were the virtual hallmark of Scottish basket hilts. There were NO Scottish bladesmiths (though there are cases where there might have been few made locally, possibly by Allen). In Scotland, the men assembling these swords and producing the hilts were sword 'slippers' essentially cutlers. There were many of these of course, and over the years all over Scotland. It was much the same throughout Great Britain, and with cutlers they often included other trades in their repertoire, mostly as jewelers, metal workers, even toy makers. There were virtually NO bladesmiths in Scotland, England, Ireland or Wales, save a few isolated exceptions who have basically been unrecorded in most accounts. Most of the blades found on British swords will be German, from Solingen primarily, however early blades from Passau and Munich are also likely.. Many blades may have Styrian origin (Austria) and as always the blades of Toledo and Italy were highly regarded. This is why they were so highly copied by Solingen and Munich (among the key blade centers, which are of course numerous others). Remember that swords were often rehilted through their working lives, which often of course covered generations if not centuries. Blades were expendable and often damaged or broken, so obviously refurbishing used different options of blades. They were traditional and heirloom, so often much older blades occur in more currently fashioned hilts. There is no concise or easy answer to the distribution of sword blades in a categorized area it depends on many mitigating factors. 2/3 . Hounslow was essentially an isolated enterprise which was basically experimental in hoping to develop an English blade making center with skilled smiths trained by the famed German makers. It remained isolated in its production while the overall assembly of swords throughout Britain remained in its traditional reliance on local cutlers. Important to note..........there was never any commercial exportation of swords FROM Britain. Swords from British sources in other spheres were entirely from colonial circumstances. Another important note the LONDON CUTLERS COMPANY by definition was a guild of CUTLERS who of course assembled swords using blades from other sources (mostly German). It is unclear how many blades were actually produced in Hounslow, however clearly there are blades inscribed with the Hounslow name and inscribed by makers who are among the German makers known there. Actually it seems that the larger volume of swords produced in Hounslow used the 'salting' of blades primarily from German sources (mostly Solingen). The reason Hounslow was chosen as a location was for the river where mills could provide the water power for mills, and most important, it was OUTSIDE the geographic jurisdiction of the London Cutlers Company. The mysterious Benjamin Stone was an entrepreneur who capitalized on the desires of Charles I to bring in German makers hopefully to AVOID reliance on German imports. This concept had been used earlier by Henry VIII, who brought German armorers to Greenwich to augment his armor making enterprises. 4. Hounslow does seem to have had favored forms, however these were locally favored forms of the period not necessarily exclusive to there. Keep in mind there were many individual shops and makers, not one sprawling factory and they operated independently. The notion of a Hounslow 'school' of hilt form evolved as usual from the popular thoughts of collectors who sensationalized the character of some of the hilt forms directly associated with Hounslow. There was no 'standard' Hounslow form hilt but the distinctive hilts of the hangers seems well established. When Hounslow was taken over by Cromwell during the Civil Wars, many of the smiths went to Oxford with the Royalists, and most of Hounslows mills were repurposed to powder production. It does seem that so called 'mortuary' swords (another collectors term) were made there as well as some rapiers, but predominating were hangers, as discussed. Picture 1 a Hounslow hanger 2 'mortuary', typical English half basket attributed to Hounslow with ANDREA FERARA blade, German blades clearly were a strong component of Hounslow produced blades. I am delighted to see someone take an interest in the Hounslow topic, and see you have read one of the articles on this. There are of course many, but there has never been a neatly packaged book with all the details of this tremendously under researched subject. Actually over many years of research I was able to find numerous brief articles, but these are quite esoteric and had to be searched extensively to locate. Attached Images Last edited by Jim McDougall; 23rd February 2024 at 07:35 PM.

15th February 2024, 08:36 PM	#3
Jim McDougall Arms Historian Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Route 66 Posts: 9,945	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