The Shotley Bridge Swordmakers (NZ090527)

The story of the Shotley Bridge swordmakers is well-known to those with an interest in the Derwent Valley, yet their history is surprisingly brief and not an altogether successful one at that. It started with a mystery and ended with a whimper.

In 1687, around twenty men and their families slipped out of the German town of Solingen and made their way secretly to the shores of England. Somewhat strangely, they ended up on the banks of the River Derwent and settled in the area now known as Shotley Bridge. No one quite knows why they came (possibly religious persecution and/or the restrictions of their guild secrets) or why the Derwent Valley (some say they were invited by a couple of enterprising Newcastle businessmen, or that there was already a small German community there). Whatever the backstory, they brought with them a very great skill: the ability to forge swords and blades like no other – springy, hollow, three-sided affairs made from tempered steel – the likes of which had not been seen before in England. The very finest of these implements bore the distinctive stamp of the Running Wolf or Flying Fox.

Such was the need for high quality weaponry of this nature that the little community soon became a roaring success – and, in 1691, they were granted a royal charter for the conduct of their particular line of work. The immigrants assimilated well, and provided for themselves – including in their work, where they mined, processed and prepared the raw materials for their trade. The site was perfect, it seems, for their needs: the fast flowing river drove their mills and the surrounding hills held the essential ores – though a good deal of iron ore was imported from Sweden, too. Many family names are associated with the swordmaking phenomenon of the time, the Oleys and the Moles being among the most famous.

They produced all sorts of implements: swords, cutlasses, bayonets, knives, etc., before moving onto more common-or-garden tools later on, such as scythes, sickles and cutlery. Up until the 1720s business remained good – excellent, in fact – but for a variety of reasons (lack of demand for weaponry, primarily) their success began to wane thereafter. Internal wrangling accentuated their plight and individuals began to leave for pastures new (e.g. Sheffield and its burgeoning steel industry). By the early-1800s, only the Oley family remained in business – and the last Shotley Bridge steel company was eventually taken over by Wilkinsons (of Wilkinson Sword fame).

The very last of the Shotley Bridge swordmakers, Joseph Oley, died in 1896, aged 90 – and he hadn’t made a sword since 1840.

Berwick v. Russia and Other Unfinished Wars (NT997533)

Most of us have heard the story of how little Berwick-upon-Tweed remained at war with mighty Russia way after the Crimean War peace treaty was signed in 1856. In case you are blissfully unaware, it goes something like this….

Because of Berwick’s tendency to change hands between England and Scotland, old-time proclamations often referred to “England, Scotland and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed”. Such was the case when the official declaration of war was made against Russia in 1853, when Queen Victoria supposedly signed herself as “Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and all British Dominions”. Though the war was wrapped up in 1856, the Treaty of Paris failed to include the “Berwick-upon-Tweed” bit, seemingly leaving the little border town at war with a substantial world power.

Investigations in the 1970s, however, revealed that Berwick was not named in either proclamation, and that the yarn had been spun by a lecturing vicar in the early twentieth century who hadn’t done his research properly. As it happens, the Wales and Berwick Act of 1746 had quite clearly stipulated that all references to England in matters relating to law should include Wales and Berwick – so the doubts about the 1853 or 1856 utterances were irrelevant. To ease all doubts, a Soviet official visited the Mayor of Berwick, Robert Knox, in 1966 to effect a peace treaty, ‘just in case’. It was at this meeting that Knox uttered the famous words: “Please tell the Russian people that they can sleep peacefully in their beds.” Unfortunately, Mayor Knox almost certainly exceeded his powers when signing the agreement, thus invalidating the belated ‘peace treaty’ – and any official paperwork concerning the meeting has been lost.

This all raises the question of whether other similar ‘conflicts’ have remained unresolved for lengthy periods of time. Wikipedia’s snappily-titled ‘List of Wars Extended by Diplomatic Irregularity’ gives a few interesting examples, including the incredible fact that the Second World War between the Allies and Germany did not technically end until the latter’s unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989-90. It was all to do with the fact that the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 concerning the governance of Germany couldn’t be properly and absolutely imposed until the nation was recognisably re-united. Consequently, the state of war persisted until the signing of the ‘Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany’ on 12th September 1990.