A Final Sprinkling of Salt

A final extract from The Salt Routes, in which I follow these most ancient trade routes .

Aside from the obvious culinary uses, the chemical industry require salt to produce hydrochloric acid, caustic soda and sodium metal. Drug companies are only a part of the numerous medical uses. Salt is used in the manufacture of paint, bricks, tiles, glazed pottery, leather tanning, shampoo, glass, yoghurt pots, plastics, slug repellant, for piping, as a water softener, on icy roads, in soap manufacture, in dyes, in agriculture, and in the production of metals such as brass, bronze, aluminium, gold, silver, and zinc. Food stuffs containing salt include bacon, fish, bread, jams, ketchup, ice cream, butter, cheese, pickles, and even confectionery.

John Corbett, the Salt King, had an array of managers working for him who looked after the daily running of the Stoke Works at Droitwich. One of these men had settled at Elms Farm, just a few hundred yards walk to work each day along Weston Hall lane. Mr Grafton and his young bride regularly entertained her brother, who arrived by train and would have walked past the salt works to reach The Elms. A common enough occurrence, but one where the visitor was about to be better known than even Corbett, for Mrs Grafton's maiden name was Elgar and this was her brother Edward, later Sir Edward and Master of the Kings Music.

Those who worked on the shop floor had a hard life. Wages were poor, working conditions necessarily hot and hours were long. Whole families were engaged in producing salt, an image depicted on the statue entitled the Saltworkers. Such conditions, as seen with mining communities, where a great number of generations are tied to a particular industry through a lack of any alternative way of earning a living and with no new blood from outside, see the family names become fixed in the area.
Anyone who has traced their family tree will be aware that the first born son and daughter would be named after the father and mother. Subsequent children would then take the names of uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents. This lead to many individuals having the same name and the community took to giving nicknames. Such were not, as is often the case today, derogatory but a reflection of the individuals skills or job and thus seen as almost a badge of office.
For example over three generations there were no less than twenty men by the name of George Harris in Droitwich. Their surname, while recorded, was hardly ever used in favour of their nickname - even by their employers. Thus we find Harris as a surname becomes Smoker, Dukes, Fantail, Pigeon, Ballis, Stafford, Tant, and even one example of one William Harris who was known as Billy Old Hen. Note this is not their christian name which is replaced here but the surname - hence we should not be looking for Smoker Harris, but Georgie Smoker.
Meanwhile other familes attracted different alternatives. The Harrison family had individuals called Banes, Cloggy, Tottenham, Buffer, Bantam, Hobby, August, Wanna, Noggy and Gomfrey. The Bourne family, who had a long association with Droitwich, kept their surname but to each was added a suffix and became Bourne-Tow, Bourne-Molly and Bourne-Column. Other branches of this family took the same route as the Harris clan, and thus we find Blue, Bobbem, Gory, Tongy, Dandy, Panto, Boniker, Rabbit, Pie and Jinkum. The Nicklin family somehow managed to acquire the nickname of Nick, through Jimmer, Joey, Harry, Peckum and Weighum. The Cuckoos were all of the Pittaway line, the Colleys became known as Toodle, and the Duggans had their name changed to Diddle.
Family connections, although the main source of nicknames, could and would be ignored in favour of a more personal reference whenever the individual was deemed to merit such. Two examples stick out, although neither of these have any written explanation but which suggest enough for us to have some idea of what was being implied. For example, maybe the morals of a lady by the name of Joe Tom George's Lizzie's Rose are questionable, to say the least. While the reader should make up their own mind as to the reasons why one gentleman was known to one and all by the name of Three-Elbowed-Dick.

In Cheshire, where the production of salt was over a wider area and other industries provided opportunites work outside salt production, the community was not reliant on a few families. However regional dialect words did develop, even as they continue to do so today despite the exposure to a more national, or even multi-national, English thanks to the ease of travel and instant interaction.
Local terms are particularly evident in jobs and in the tools used by these individuals. Common salt pans were up to one hundred feet in length and worked by gangs of men known as wallers. These men had the job of turning the evaporating brine as it thickened and the salt crystallised out. Not a pleasant job at best owing to the extreme heat and the dehydrating effect of working so closely with salt. However evaporation was never even throughout the brine mixture, even in the smallest pans and here they were huge. In order to reach every part of the pan with their rake-like implements the wallers were required to stand in half barrels placed IN the boiling brine!
Tool names varied from place to place and even from one works to another, hence a mundler, a mudling stick and a punner were all the same thing. In Victorian times the tubs and storage vats used to drain excess brine renaining in the salt were made from elm. They came in sizes known as 40s, 60s or 80s and the salt was packed down by using the mundling stuck, whereupon it would be left to dry out and produce blocks or lumps of dry salt. Other tool names included rake, chipping paddle, lofting spike, happer, skimmer, mundling peg, salt tub, cotter patch, and bagging shovel.
Commercial salt extraction started near the modern Marbury estate near Northwich around 1670. The layers of rock salt, some eighty feet thick, were mined leaving columns of rock salt supporting the ceiling. Unfortunately these caverns regularly flooded and the pillars were dissolved, causing the land to collapse into the caverns below. Taken overland to Frodsham Bridge, the rock salt was then shipped along the River Mersey where it was dissolved in sea water and refined. A rapid increase in business followed the work to make the River Weaver navigable from 1721. However all this was based on a lucky discovery, for these salt mines was only discovered by accident when John Jackson was prospecting for coal in 1670.
Salt workers everywhere were known for dipping all manner of personal items in the brine to produce highly unusual decorations. Each dipping in the brine solution left a film on the item and, as successive dippings dried, a layer of crystals became encrusted on the item. All manner of objects were dipped including plenty of old shoes.

Northwich Victoria, the local football team who regularly come to the attention of the nation when they appear in the early rounds of the FA Cup, are nicknamed the Salt Boys.
When Queen Victoria came to visit during her long reign, the town wanted to add a local flavour to the decor in order to welcome the reigning monarch. During this era decorative arches appeared in quantities not seen since the Roman era. Hence the town produced an entranceway, a construction made from local salt with the bottom supporting pillars cut from brown rock salt, topped by an archway of white salt blocks. It is not recorded how long they withstood the weathering of the British climate after the Queen and the local dignitaries had passed underneath.

Further Pinches of Salt

Carrying on from past weeks we see how salt is also ingrained into our language. We have already noted how the Latin for salt has provided us with the word salary. Yet the Roman troops were paid in salt, the common currency throughout the Empire, and the word 'soldier' is derived from this. Latin sal dare means quite literally 'to give salt' and not only gave English 'solider' but also French soldat. The word salinate, meaning 'to change completely, in essence', is derived from the Latin salinator the servant whose duty required him to pound lumps, clean and store the salt for the household. Roman salarium was the payment made to salt workers who extracted the salt, while a saller was the ancient salt box which kept the salt clean and dry and is seen today on every table as the salt 'cellar'.
However in some parts of Africa salt coinage was in use up to at least the 19th century. In very hot countries salt was even more important, vital to the health of the people and predictably taxed unfairly. Some may recall how Mahatma Gandhi took the long trek through India to the sea. Here he boiled the sea water to evaporate the water, thus highlighting how unfair it was to tax a necessity.
To "take with a grain (or pinch) of salt" warns we should be skeptical of the validity of whatever is being spoken of - in Latin this is cum grano salis and the English phrase first recorded in 1647. Another commonly heard phrase is describing someone as "worth one's salt", however this seems to be a more recent addition to the language and is not known in English before the 19th century.
Less well known, as they have largely fallen out of use, are "to sit above the salt" and "to sit below the salt". Clearly there is a demarcation line here but this is not a line of salt. In the 16th century salt was subjected to high taxation and was ridiculously expensive in comparison to today. Hence it was associated with the tables of the rich and, as it was the norm for the rich to sit at the higher tables and the rest lower down, to be seated "above the salt" recognised you were the equal of the host. Note that the salt would have been held in as ornate and expensive a container as the host could reasonably afford, for it was not sufficient to know where the salt was, it had to be clearly seen.
Some indication of the degree of taxation can be seen by the last rise imposed. It happened in the reign of William and Mary, the year was 1805 and while Admiral Lord Nelson was planning the downfall of the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar, the Customs Service were raising the tax on salt to thirty pounds per ton. At the time the weekly wage of a dockworker, farm labourer and sailor was approximately seven shillings (35p), which would give the same spending power as 14 pounds a week in the early 21st century. If you consider that to be bad, spare a thought for those in Europe where the French had to be content with the equivalent of just 20p, and the German economy meant their dockers took home just 13p per week. In 1825 the despised Salt Tax was abolished by the British government, the same year as the vast salt deposits were discovered at Stoke Prior.
These were by no means the earliest known examples of salt tax. The first salt tax in England was imposed by William III (1650-1702); the Russians were taxed by Peter the Great (1682-1725); Hungary and Germany were taxed from the 13th century, France from the 12th; the Syrians paid a salt tax to Alexander the Great (336-323BC); the Romans extracted a salt tax from the Jews; Egyptian kings levied a salt tax on the priests of Hammomen; while the first datable written record of a salt tax was by Ancus Martius, author of Salinarum Vectigal in 640BC.
As the Saxon feudal system of government took shape, so the officials were quick to impose fines, tolls and taxes in any way they could. From the Cheshire wyches salt already provided a hefty income for the Earl of Chester and the Crown. Fines and tolls for those from the local hundred were at least half and as little as a quarter of those paid by visitors. For example, the toll for a cart drawn by two oxen was tuppence, for four oxen fourpence, one packhorse a ha'penny, eight manloads a penny, and these were the local rates.
Overloading a cart or horse, thus avoiding tolls, was not wise either for if the cart axle snapped or the horse's back broke within one league of the wyches meant a fine of two shillings, assuming they were caught - a league is a distance which changes depending upon the era and location, but could be seen to be the distance travelled in a single hour. Outside of that league the officer had no jurisdiction. As the salt was packed tightly into the containers, unscrupulous traders were known to split the containers to form two loosely packed loads from a single tightly packed one. While this meant the trader would have to pay twice as much in tolls, he would more than recoup that when he sold the load on. However this did not look good on the supplier and, should he be found to have split the load, would realise a massive fine of forty shillings.

Yet More Pinches of Salt

Following on from my last post another series of the unsual which makes salt a story well worth a read.

Archaeologists have shown salt to have been extracted at Droitwich since at least 200BC. However there are signs of human habitation in the area from 8000BC. This was around the time when our islands were comparatively recently separated from Continental Europe and before the nation had settled to an agrarian lifestyle. It is tempting to suggest that they were using the brine which bubbled to the surface, for they would certainly have needed extra salt in their diet. However their method of extraction left no record to prove this.

Even with the technological advances of the 21st century, salt could still have a major influence on our future and possibly even more so than in the past. The Gulf Stream brings the warmer climate of the equatorial regions along the east coast of North America and to the eastern coastline of Europe as far north as Norway. Hitting the cold waters of the Arctic one would expect warmer water to rise above it, but the increased salinity of the warmer water makes it denser and it sinks. Eventually, through a complex system the waters of the Gulf Stream return to the equatorial regions and begin the cycle once more.
Global warming melts the polar ice, introducing more fresh water into the system leading to the deflection or even cessation of the Gulf Stream. Thus the system of heat exchange around the planet is radically altered and, odd as it sounds, global warming could produce a much colder Britain as much as a warmer one.
And all because of salt.

Salt has become every much a part of culture. Not only for the traditional British fish and chips but all over the world and in the most unusual ways. In the east an honoured guest would have been welcomed by the blood of an animal sacrificed outside the entrance. In the event of a surprise visit salt would have been scattered at the entrance, thus showing that salt was considered almost the equal of blood.
Greek philosopher Aristotle, writing in the 4th century BC, encourages the eating of a measure of salt as an offer of and sealing of a friendship. Thereafter to renege on that friendship would have been tantamount to treason. Russian traditionalists have no opportunity to carry their bride over the threshold, for they will already have a lighted candle in one hand and a measure of salt in the other. Perhaps this was the same measure of salt which had been handed to the bride and groom as a traditional wedding gift. In Denmark visitors to those on their death bed will throw salt on the open fire in order to ward off the devil.

More Salt Facts

Following on from last week's introduction to salt, which resulted a number of appreciative comments (thank you) here I produce a few facts - some may be known others not so well known.

The Salt Routes
is a journey through time as it studies the very earliest days of trade, following the routes on foot, bicycle, or even in a motor if desired.

Sodium Chloride, NaCl, occurs as rock salt or halite and is used today for much more than simply cooking. At the beginning of the 21st century, worldwide salt production was in excess of 210 million metric tonnes and hardly an industry on the planet does not make some use of this simple compound.

But where does it come from? The salt that is being extracted is the result of a dried up sea of some 220 million years ago, even when it is pumped up as saturated brine it is down to rainwater seeping down to disolved the rock salt or, in some cases, where fresh water has been pumped into the band of salt to deliberately produce brine. The salty sea derives its salt from the land, however there must have been a beginning to this cycle and the question remains, where did the salt come from? The answer is probably that it came from the land and was disolved over aeons as the land was continually washed by the rains and rivers. However there are those who maintain that the world's oceans came to our planet courtesy of the dirty snowballs called comets and, if this is the case, perhaps the salt came with it.

In ancient Egypt the preservation qualites of salt were realised. Bodies buried in the dry sand of the Sahara, with its high salt content, were soon robbed of their moisture and thus preserved. An example of the effectiveness of this simple technique is on view in the British Museum. Affectionately known as Ginger, after the tufts of ginger hair still attached to his head, the 5,000 year-old body of a man was discovered in the sands of Egypt and was even better preserved than the mummification processes later adopted for their pharaohs. Indeed it was these early burials which later developed into the mummification with which the ancient Egyptians are so well known. Some reports state how the bodies of the dead were immersed in brine for ten weeks before the embalmer got to work, while when she heard of the death of Mark Antony, Cleopatra ordered his body pickled in brine.

Salt was also used in the preparation of food left inside the great pyramids. The journey to the afterlife was a lengthy one with many tasks and trials to be overcome on the way. Clearly even the mighty pharaohs needed sustenance on the journey, thus it was that a selection of foods were left within the tombs. Clearly the food would have gone bad equally as quickly as the body and so it was heavily salted and wrapped, much the same as the mummy it was meant to feed.

The value of salt in ancient times is seen in in every major civilization that grew up around the Mediterranean. First came the Phoenicians, a people from modern-day Lebanon where there was little arable land and therefore they were forced to trade. What Lebanon did have was trees, the wood was used to build ships and the Phoenician navigators travelled all around the Mediterranean, are known to have visited Britain, the coastline around Africa and at least as far as India.

By creating channels they allowed the sea to flood the marshes, then dammed those areas and allowed the warm Mediterranean sun to evaporate the water leaving behind tons of natural salt. A simple process and one which is almost labour free when compared with the working conditions in the salt works of Cheshire and Droitwich.

Not only did the salt itself bring great wealth, but their skills as mariners saw them net great quantities of Mediterranean tuna on a scale never before seen. Tuna are fish of the open ocean and the problem had always been getting the fish to port before they started to rot. Salt enabled the Phoenicians to preserve their catch and cash in on a new market. Over one thousand years they rose in power and influence, establishing numerous cities including the most famous of Carthage in modern Tunisia.

One of the most valuable items they traded were the spices and, in this era at least, the most precious spice was pepper. The two items are still linked on tables all around the world and yet the irony is that the devaluation of salt was directly linked to the influx of pepper.

From around 600BC the Phoenician influence was in decline, hastened by something very much in the news in the 21st century - climate change. A few years of very extreme weather for the region, storms destroyed almost half of the salt pans, the rest were ruined by the incessant rain making evaporation impossible. As a result their economy was dealt a blow from which, at least collectively, they never recovered. The individual cities fell, eventually even the might of Carthage was no more.

Ley Lines Across the Midlands

In 2009 my first walking book was published, a book which is virtually a prequel to my series on the origins of place names for it was my interest in ley lines which resulted in the eventual books on the origins of place names. It was probably only a matter of time before I turned my attention to the ancient trackways of England and, in particular, to my native Midlands. For those who may want to explore this further, I reproduce the introduction here. Copies are, of course, available in the time honoured 'all good book shops' or directly from the author if you drop me a line. Any comments would be appreciated..........

"Within these pages we will tread the paths walked by our ancestors some 4,000 and more years ago. The routes will take us through some of the loveliest countryside to be found anywhere, some with breathtaking views from the summits of hills, doen to the valleys below. Sometimes the trackways still pass through woodland, as they did when created to provide safe passage from one hill fort to another.

None of the original markers have survived or, if they have, cannot be shown to be originals. However, the markers which have replaced them are still seen, providing a history lesson everywhere we look; not only cultural history but natural history too, for a wealth of flora and fauna have made these regions their homes. Yet were it not for man's creation of these environments, England would still be one vast woodland; if so many of the plants and animals would never have thrived here, whether they had made their way to our shores or had been introduced by man. This book will have something for thise interested in history both ancient and modern, the natural world, walking, or even those who simply delight in this green and pleasant land.

Having walked these ancient paths for the most part, I was forced to walk them twice - from the car and back again. However, this provided me with the opporunity to see everything from both aspects, which revealed many things I had not noticed on my outward journey - and these pathways were traversed both ways.

I have no idea how many miles I walked in preparing these pages, although my level of fitness has improved beyond all expectations. My thanks are due to all those who rediscovered the trackways I trod and pointed me in the right direction. Furthermore, without all the establishments that provided a meal for a hungry man and a bed for his very weary legs, I would still be walking today.

To experience the feeling of standing at the site of a hill fort which would have been a hive of activity for centuries was very moving. This path was one which others had walked almost since mankind had abandoned the life of the hunter-gatherer, forming permanent settlements and adopting the farming life. Images formed of the landscape around me as it would have appeared before Stonehenge and the much earlier Avebury circles were even thought about.

When I walked the land the changing images of Saxon, Romano-British, Iron Age, Bronze Age and Neolithic times were remarkably easy tos ee. As you follow my journeys in the ensuing pages I hope you are able to glimpse some of the things I saw."

Tracing the ancient trackways provided me with an avenue to explore pre-history from a very different perspective. I climbed a few hills, walked many a mile and, owing to the obligatory 'instant energy rations' strapped to my back (courtesy of the Cadbury organisation) never managed to lose more than the odd pound or two - in fact I just got very hungry!

Much of the early travel was for trade, a bartering of commodities in which they were not self-sufficient. The one item very few were able to produce for themselves was salt, scarcity made it valuable, and increased demand. Today the salt roads still exist and it was natural that after following the early tracks I then turned to the first trade roads and thus produced The Salt Routes. It is to this subject that I will turn next time.

Ley Lines Across the Midlands is available from the author or direct from the publishers:

http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/Ley-Lines-Across-the-Midlands.aspx

Incidentally, for those who will be in the region of Ryton XI Towns in Shropshire this coming Wednesday 15th September, I shall be speaking on the subject of Shropshire Place Names. All visitors are welcome and books will be on sale (at a reasonable discount). It would be a pleasure to meet you.