SALT in the 17th and 18th Century #Salt #History #Artisan

 by Deborah Swift 

Salt comes from two main sources: sea water, and the mineral halite (also known as rock salt). Salt is something we take for granted nowadays, forgetting that the term for our pay, the salary comes from the Latin salarium, originally denoting a Roman soldier's allowance to buy salt.

Near where I live in Lancashire and Cumbria, there is a long history of panning for salt in the Morecambe Bay. In 1748, William Brownrigg’s The Art of Making Common Salt mentions ‘sleeching’ on Morecambe Bay. Sleeching, I discovered, is scraping up salt-impregnated sand and silt, then watering out the salt to produce a concentrated brine, then boiling in 'saltcotes' –  small huts installed with lead pans over a fire.

But as canals and railways allowed the cheap transport of salt from inland mines and abroad, coastal salt-making gradually faded away, and by the 1860s it had almost entirely disappeared. One of the biggest producers of salt was Lion Saltworks in Cheshire and you can find a wonderful post and pictures,like the one above, about it here.

Norwich, Nantwich, Middlewich

Many towns and cities in England end in –wich  (or wych) and these are traditionally associated with salt production.  The suffix -wich derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning roughly "a dwelling or fortified place" and usually these were places with trading activity on low-lying coasts or on salt marshes, so many of these towns were also active in producing salt, which was a major and lucrative export.

White Gold – Salt from sea water

During the Early Modern Age, salt production from seawater was a profitable industry and soon became Scotland's third-largest export after wool and fish. It was deemed so valuable by the 18th Century that people called it "white gold”. The remains of nine salt pan houses and a windmill can still be seen at St Monans in Fife, Scotland, and the industry remains in the names of places like Prestonpans. The picture below is of salt harvesters in Brittany. 

New Forest Salt

Lymington in the New Forest, on the Solent estuary, is a town that began as an Anglo-Saxon village and is recorded in the Domesday Book as "Lentune". From the Middle Ages and up to the 19th century, Lymington was well-known for its salt making 

On a visit to Lymington in the 1690's traveller Celia Fiennes writes of Lymington as having a few small ships, but “the greatest trade is by their salterns” and she gives details of how the seawater was pumped through pipes into iron or copper pans situated into the salt-houses where it was evaporated away by boiling rapidly over coal fired furnaces. A vast amount of salt could be made in a single pan beneath which the furnace was kept blazing away all day and night (see the picture). By the middle of the eighteenth century there were about one hundred and fifty active salt pans. 

Read more about Celia Fiennes here, on the English Heritage site. The picture of the boiling off of water over a furnace is from National Gallery of Scotland.

A Tax on Salt

Salt was a precious and valuable commodity used the world over, as it is an essential nutrient. In 1641, during the commonwealth period, the previously abolished salt tax was reintroduced to raise money for Parliament. However the tax was revoked on the King’s return in 1660 and not reinstated until 1693 under the reign of William III. The tax was originally set at two shillings a bushel on foreign salt, but only one shilling on native salt to protect English salt workers.

Salt Wars

In the early 17th century, while well-known nutmeg wars were fought between Dutch and English merchants over imported and exotic "East Indian" spices, a different but equally intense rivalry erupted as traders in the Netherlands tried to secure their salt supply for the processing of herrings, butter and cheese.

The Baltic and Poland had extensive salt deposits, but the best supplies were controlled by the Spanish monarchy, in Portugal and the Caribbean, where salt more suited to herring was produced. Throughout the 17th century, the problem of salt supplies determined the Dutch attitude to the Spanish and Portuguese, and affected these empires’ prosperity in the Dutch "Golden Age".

 Want to know more? The history of salt is fascinating and far too big for a single post. Watch this interesting video on the history of salt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFOxbmgr4so

Or read Mark Kurlansky's Salt 

Deborah Swift is the author of  nine books set in the 17th Century, as well as others set in the 20th Century. Find her at www.deborahswift.com or chat with her via Twitter @swiftstory

 

WORTH YOUR SALT? – Dianne Hofmeyr

Imagine a lake so pink, it’s the colour of a flamingo feather. Picture it surrounded by white, crystal mountains, glistening and sparkling in the sunlight. Out in the middle of the lake there are small boats and people wading through the pink as one would wade through a strawberry milkshake in a dream, their limbs etched dark against the reflection and glitter. Sunglasses might help bring this surreal world into focus. This is Lac Rose or Lake Retba in Senegal and these are salt gatherers. It’s the 21st century.

You sit at a dinner table. Your host is Charles V of France. You are Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor. You glance down towards your son, King Wenceslas, who will inherit your title and who sits further down the table. In front of him is the nef, the jewelled salt cellar in the shape of a ship – both salt cellar and a symbol of the ship of state that declares the stability of a nation. Your host, the King of France has been wise if somewhat indecisive. He has had three nefs of gold forged and placed them strategically in front not only of himself but in front of you as well as your son. It’s the 14th century. 

‘There is no better food than salted vegetables' are the words written on an ancient papyrus. You are a priest preparing the tomb for an important Egyptian body. Preserving the food is as important as preserving the body. You know salts present in desert sand preserve flesh. Protein unwinds when exposed to salt. Salting resembles cooking. Were it not for your aversion to pigs you would have probably invented ham, instead you content yourself with preserving olives in salt and you dry and salt and press the eggs of mullet to create a food that will later become known as bottarga. It is 4000 BC.

You are part of a think tank. A substance needed by all humans for good health must surely make a good tax generator. Everyone has to buy salt. A tax on salt is the answer. A few centuries later some of your Chinese compatriots will find that mixing potassium nitrate, a salt otherwise known as saltpetre with sulphur and carbon will create a powder that when ignited will produce an explosion. But for now, you are dealing in salt more urbane – salt found under the ground in the form of brine. As yet you don’t know that by the 11th century, the salt producers of Sichuan will develop percussion drilling for retrieving salt brine and will be using bamboo piping which is salt resistant to transport the brine to boiling houses where it will be reduced to salt crystals. These salt crystals aren’t added to food by sprinkling but with a salt-based sauce. Fish and soybeans are fermented with salt in earthernware pots. It’s about 500 BC but in time the fish is removed and only the beans are used. The sauce becomes known as jiangyou or soy sauce as we know it today.

You’re a Roman soldier and paid in salt. Rome not wanting to be dependent on Etruscan salt from the northern bank of the Tiber, starts its own saltworks on the river in Ostia, and the first Roman road is built, the Via Salaria, the Salt Road to bring the salt to Rome. The Latin word sal becomes the French word solde which is the origin of soldier and Roman salted vegetables gives us the word salad today. The Romans much like the Chinese, devise a sauce where fish scraps are put in earthernware jars with layers of salt and made into a type of garum. Sardines which derive their name from a fish caught and cured in Sardinia are favoured for garum. It’s 640 BC. By Pliny’s time salt is being used to extract the purple dye, murex, from this tiny whelk and Cleopatra can demand enough of this expensive colourant to dye the sails of her warship purple.

You are a Celt moving southwards across central Europe. You are a salt miner who chisels tunnels into rugged mountains, called a Celt by the Greeks, meaning one who lives in hiding – but known as a Gaul by the Romans and Egyptians, which comes from the word hal, meaning salt. You have sacked Rome travelling on horseback with heavy swords when Western Europe has never before seen mounted cavalry. Some years later you invade what is now known as Turkey. You are tall, blond and often red-bearded and your women wear braids and bright clothing. You sell salt. It is you who devises a method of salting pig to create the finest hams. It’s 390 BC.

Herring is the dominant fish in the booming medieval markets, so much so that you, who are salt fish dealers in Paris, are called harengères, herring sellers. But it is the Basques who, on their whaling expeditions discover a northern fish that is to take Europe by storm. It is white and fatless, therefore easier to cure. It is cod. The Vikings have been air-drying it for centuries but they have no salt. The Basques have salt – plenty of it. The baccalà industry is born. It’s the 9th century

Salt becomes the engine of both Venetian and Genoese trade. Venice tries to dominate the salt industry by buying salt from as far away as the Crimea and Cyprus while Genoa has its salt industry in Ibiza. Prosciutto makers use salt from the salt wells of Salsomaggiore. Cheesemakers use salt from Venice and Genoa. The opening up of the Atlantic sea route makes a giant out of Genoa. Venice is left behind. Christopher Columbus himself is born in Genoa. It’s the 15th Century.

I’ve sprinkled and steeped you briefly in salt’s history across the ages, now look out for the book SALT – a History of the World by Mark Kurlansky, who has also written a book about COD and another on The Basque History of the World. Every page is fascinating.

You won’t find anything about a pink lake in the book but it does exist. I saw it 20 years ago in Senegal. I’m sure it’s as pink as ever made so by an algae in the water that produces a red pigment. I’m sure the salt gatherers are still out there today smeared in shea butter to protect their bodies from the sting, as they wade through the briny mix in the glare, without sunglasses, in tattered clothing and mismatched shoes. Even in the 21st century, it’s the salt workers who still lack everything – except salt.

 

www.diannehofmeyr.com

The Magic Bojabi Tree is on the nomination list for the 2014 Kate Greenaway Award.