Cornelius Whitehouse & Sons of Cannock were one of Britain’s leading ‘edge’ tool manufacturers in the early 19th Century, producing a vast array of tools such as: hammers, billhooks, hedging knives, axes and chisels. They took out a patent in 1943 for improvements to the way that wooden shafted tools were attached to their metal heads. No surprise then that when the Ministry of Defence (MOD) were equipping their Mountain Troops during World War Two, they turned to Cornelius & Co to make their ice axes and hammers. You’ll find an ice axe elsewhere in the collection.

No surprise either that Cornelius & Co seem to have used an existing ice/piton hammer as a template for their own. Stubai of Austria had a very similar looking tool (see pic above) and it could be that they copied it, we can’t be 100% sure of that though.

These hammers seem to have been made as both piton hammers and for ice climbing, and were often given the general term ‘North Wall Hammers’. As they were produced in 1944, not long before the war ended, it’s unlikely that they saw much military action. As a consequence the hammers, along with vast amounts of MOD surplus gear, was sold via various outdoor equipment retailers to civilian mountaineers, and we’re fairly sure that this one we have here in the collection has that pedigree.

We’ve given this fella some TLC and updated the pics from our earlier entry. It looks like he’s battered a few pitons along the way, unfortunately we don’t know who was holding it at the time as we don’t have a record of the previous owner. Thanks in absentia.