Sprinkly Salt - a history of salt in Britain
LESSON ACTIVITY
Age group: 7 - 11 years
tesco.com/eathappyproject
1086
In the Domesday Book, salt appears in place names across the
South coast, where hundreds of salt pans were operating.
Names included ‘Salcott’, ‘Saltcote Hall’ and ‘Gore Saltings’.
The use of the suffix ‘-wich’ in place names was used to denote
areas associated with salt production including ‘Droitwich’,
‘Middlewich’, ‘Nantwich’, ‘Northwich’ and ‘Leftwich’.
500 - 1500
Salt was so
expensive it was
sometimes called
‘white gold’. The main
use for salt was as a
food preserver for the
winter months.
7 - 400 AD
Salt was an essential
commodity to the Roman army and
so, in Roman Britain, salt-making was set up at
many coastal sites and at the inland brine springs of
Cheshire and Worcestershire. Seawater was partially
evaporated and then heated in clay pots over open
fires. When the water had gone, the pots were broken
open to reveal salt. Legend says that part of a
Roman soldier’s pay was in salt, although this is
probably not the case. The word ‘soldier’ comes
from the Latin ‘sal dare’ meaning ‘to give salt’
and the word ‘salary’ from the Latin ‘salarium’.
Legend also says that soldiers
who performed well were told
they were ‘worth their salt’,
which is a phrase that is
still used today.
1500s
A considerable quantity of salt started to come to
London from Scotland, where cheap coastal coal
was used to evaporate seawater in iron pans.
1620s
It became too expensive to
use wood to heat brine so salt makers in
England were forced to switch to cheaper
coal. However, the coal melted the lead
pans that were used and so
there was a general change from
lead to iron.
1800s
Salt had always been heavily taxed but in the early
1800s the tax rose to £30 a ton. This priced many
salt traders out of the market and a lot of Britain’s
salt production stopped. It became more economical
to produce salt from
the Cheshire salt mines,
and so nearby
Liverpool became a
prime port for
exporting salt from Britain across the world.
Anglesey
2016
In Britain today
there are three
main producers of
culinary salt. These are
based in Essex, Anglesey
and Cornwall.
Essex
Cornwall