Keith Fisher, a north east historian, has been researching sword making for many years and has now published his research
He has kindly given the Village Trust a compressed .pdf version of his book to post as a free download.
If you prefer a hard copy it can also be acquired as a fine book, purely for the printing cost of £15.00, and will be available from Newcastle Cloth Market print-shop Photoline: call 0191 232 5454 to order; the book can be collected, or posted to you [in a stiff cardboard package] for an additional £5. [NB: The resolution of the images has been reduced to allow it to be downloaded, while images in the hard copy book are much more detailed.]
Keith explains:
“A request from my friend Yvonne Young (who is a local historian, lecturer and publisher of books on North Eastern heritage) to suggest a topic she could use at men’s clubs and associations, prompted me to give her David Richardson’s famous book on the German swordmakers of Shotley Bridge.
As I attempted to precis the book for her, and studied others like it, I realised this was a huge story that could finally be fully researched given modern information access.
As the story grew it became obvious there were all the ingredients for a TV documentary and I pursued my research with this end in view. None-the-less, the story makes a splendid local history book; so while we wait for TV production to resume, I have converted my research into just such a narrative.
Ultimately, it will end up as a national companion publication to the TV documentary, but until then I am making it freely available to all interested parties, in particular the residents of the Derwent Valley.”
Note: The title of the book has been changed from “The Sword in the Hat” to “The Crown and Crossed Swords”
Shotley Bridge Village Trust 