Thank you Peter for reminding us of a view on "what did the Germans ever do
for us" proposed by Roger Burt and myself in the 1980s. Perhaps it is a
feature of mining history that its proponents forget, or fail to read up,
what has gone before. Peter rightly points out that the Germans who came to
the Lake District were skilled in the mining and processing of copper ores
and that their venture was an economic failure. The German domination of
the copper trade might come as a shock to the Swedes at Falun and I might
also remind Peter that when Hochstetter visited Cornwall he failed to
recognise its importance as a copper resource.
People regularly tell me that Germans made an important contribution to
Dales lead mining. I'm not sure where this myth comes from - perhaps that
has something to do with fairies too. Up here, they would be boggarts, of
course.
Do not forget that the Angles got here from the continent soon after the
Romans left c410AD. In the 650 years until the Normans got here, I'm sure
that the Saxon incomers had a great influence on our language etc (even
today, I regularly speak Anglo-Saxon when reading my emails!). Turning to
Knockers, I'm not sure how Peter's "Anglo-Saxon immigration into the British
Isles" fits with modern notions of Cornish nationhood and the purity of the
blood-line, but I'm sure we will find out (more Anglo-Saxon).
Mike Gill
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