60. Of Flour and Salt: Roger Conant the Salter

The Salters' Company arms. The Latin motto means 'Salt Savours All'

Roger Conant's father Richard has been described as East Budleigh's miller, and the village mill house has traditionally been viewed as the family home. Recent research has shown that such stories need to be taken with a pinch of salt. (Sorry!)

 It is known that by 1620, when he was living in London, Roger Conant described himself as a salter. He may well have gained experience of the salter’s trade in his native Devon.

‘The horrid history of Hugo the salter’, sculpture by Angie Harlock in Budleigh Salterton's Fairlynch Museum. The display tells how the Prior of Otterton supposedly discovered the body of one of his salt workers who sadly drowned in a barrel of salted herring 

Salt had been harvested on the coast since Roman times, contributing to the prosperity of Otterton Priory. But by the 17^th century it was being imported rather than harvested locally on Budleigh’s salt marshes.

And in any case the trade of a salter had evolved from merely gathering salt from brine in salt-pans. The term was used to refer to both employees of a salt works and to specialists in salting fish or meat. By 1726 Daniel Defoe was using it to describe traders involved in the ‘buying of cochineal, indigo, galls, shumach, logwood, fustick, madder, and the like’.

The modern day association of the London-based Salters’ Company with chemistry and science can be traced right back to salters’ use of chemical preparations involving such ingredients in a variety of industries.

Left:  Interior of a bag, purse and glove maker's workshop (woodcut by Jost Amman, 1568); 16th century kid gloves, on loan from Dents Museum, displayed in 2018 at Fairlynch Museum’s Raleigh 400 exhibition 

Leather workers were especially skilled in the art of transforming raw hides into the delicate material used to make these gloves, exhibited as part of Fairlynch Museum’s Raleigh 400 display in 2018.

Hides being processed at J. & F.J. Baker’s tannery 

Image credit: https://www.colvilleleather.co.uk

Salt was traditionally used in the leather industry to prevent hides from rotting before they are tanned. It is still part of the process used at the centuries-old tannery of J. & F.J. Baker, in Colyton, home to the family of Roger Conant’s mother.  

Christopher's, the former tannery in East Budleigh

Image credit: Otter Valley Association

Could Roger Conant have learnt some of the salter’s skills nearer home? Until the 1830s East Budleigh had its own tannery at the house known today as Christopher's, a Grade II listed cob, stone and thatch cottage.  For 300 years it flourished as a tannery, supplying tanned hides for boots, shoes, and saddlery, including, it is said, buckets produced for the Tudor navies.

In 1609, aged 21, Roger’s brother Christopher Conant was sent to London, where he was apprenticed to Thomas Allen, a grocer, and was admitted to the freedom of the Grocers' Company on 14 March 1616.

Like the Salters, many members of the Grocers’ Company were associated with food preservation, important at a time when meat was often so ‘off’ that it needed spices to make it palatable!  

The Pepperers’ Guild, first mentioned in 1180 AD, was a forerunner of the Grocers’ Company, and was concerned with the import and storage of pepper and other spices: cloves feature on the Company’s coat of arms, above. Some Grocers were also apothecaries; indeed in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries, some were prosecuted by the College of Physicians for practising medicine. 

Roger also left Devon for the capital to learn a trade, but no similar documentation exists for him: the records of The Salters’ Company were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Top: ‘Men carry meat and other wares through the streets of London’ - c. 1615–16 Michael van Meer    © The University of Edinburgh; The Fish Market,1568, by Joachim Beuckelaer 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

During his time as an apprentice salter, Roger Conant would have learnt further about how salt was used.  Before the advent of refrigeration, along with drying, pickling and smoking, heavy salting was one of the main means of preserving food. Hard cured fish could be stored for months and sometimes years. 

Apart from the tanning and leather industries, salt was also used in dyeing fabrics and in the formulation of medicines and ointments. 

Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. One of the roads in the town is named Tobacco Close  

Image credit https://www.cotswolds.info

The diversity of salters' interests can be seen in the case of the London merchant John Stratford, a member of the Salters' Company. In 1619, he purchased spare land in and around Winchcombe in Gloucestershire and planted tobacco, seen at this time as having medicinal qualities.  Unfortunately for him, the Act of Parliament banning tobacco growing in England was passed in that year, just as the first crop in Winchcombe was ready to harvest.

The Great Fire of London, depicted by an unknown painter (1675), as it would have appeared from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September 1666. To the left is London Bridge; to the right, the Tower of London. St. Paul's Cathedral is in the distance, surrounded by the tallest flames.  

Image credit: museumoflondonprints.com

Both St Ann’s and All Hallows Church were destroyed in the Great Fire of London, along with records of the Salters’ Company

It was in London, on 11 November 1618, at St Ann’s Church, Blackfriars, that Roger Conant married Sarah Horton. One might have expected the marriage to take place at  All Hallows’ Church, next to Salters’ Hall in Bread Street, where most salters attended.

Portrait of William Gouge by Gustavus Ellinthorpe Sintzenich (1821-1892) Collection of Mansfield College, Oxford 

But St Ann’s was known as a Puritans’ church; William Gouge (1575–1653), was the minister and preacher for 45 years, from 1608.

He was also a member of the 1643 Westminster Assembly of Divines, as was Roger’s elder brother John Conant. 

The Puritan tradition remained strong in the Conant family of East Devon.

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25. Salt, Salters and Budleigh Salterton

Prof Stan Roberts, Honorary Professor of Organic Chemistry at Manchester University, gives an insight into the stuff that makes Budleigh 'worth its salt'

Salt marshes on the River Otter estuary at Budleigh Salterton

The early history of Budleigh Salterton is surely indicated in the latter part of its name. Salt (sodium chloride or NaCl) was collected locally by monks from nearby Otterton Priory and the development of the salt industry helped to propel the emergence of Budleigh ‘salt town’ from what was an obscure fishing hamlet.

Winsford salt mine  Image credit: Compass Minerals  www.deepstore.com

So, in the 18th century, salt was being collected in large salt pans at the estuary of the River Otter. The evaporation of sea water in this way forms salt as a beautifully delicate crust (fleur de sel). Of course this relatively small scale operation eventually gave way to industrial salt mining in towns such as Winsford (Cheshire) where the tunnels in the mine, seen above, are now up to 20 m wide and 7 m high.

Going back to ancient times, salt was used for the preservation of fish and meat as well as a purgative or as an ointment for the healing of damaged skin (rubbing salt in the wound). Roman soldiers valued their salt rations (‘sal’ – the origin of salary) and woe betide a guard falling asleep on duty since he would then be considered ‘not worth his salt’.

Arms of The Worshipful Company of Salters

The motto translates as 'Salt Savours All'

The importance of salt gave rise to a distinguished profession...the Salter. The first licence to a fraternity following the trade of Salter was issued by Richard II in 1394, though an informal association had been in existence well before that time, based around Bread Street in London. The fraternity developed into the Salters’ Company, one of the twelve City of London Livery Companies.

This imposing statue created in 1911 by the Anglo-American sculptor  Sir Henry Kitson commemorates Roger Conant in the city that he founded   

Image credit: Destination Salem and John Andrews 

Of local interest, in about 1610 a miller’s son from East Budleigh, Roger Conant, moved to London to become a Salter. Shortly thereafter he set sail with his wife and son to the Colonies and in 1626 became the founding father of the town (now city) of Salem in Massachusetts.

Through the centuries the Salters’ Company retained its prestigious position and in 1918 formed a flagship charity called the Salters’ Institute with the purpose of assisting young chemists returning from the Great War to continue their studies. As the increasing importance of ‘salts’ was recognised, so the breadth of interest of the Salters’ Institute grew in parallel.

Indeed, salt itself (NaCl) has come under something of a cloud. While it is still used in baking and cooking in general, the current recommendation is that the daily intake of NaCl should not be excessive. When overdone, NaCl causes water retention in the body, resulting in higher blood pressure and the more likely occurrence of heart attack and stroke.

Moving into more positive territory, away from sodium chloride, the closest relatives are sodium fluoride (NaF) and sodium bromide (NaBr). Sodium fluoride (and other fluorides) is added to tap water since it protects teeth enamel. Sodium bromide is found in relatively large quantities off the coast of Anglesey; until recently it was extracted from the sea water there and converted into bromine for industrial use.

Fully unfolded spray boom used for tasks such as weedkilling and fertilising 

Image credit: Chafer Machinery 

Agriculture benefits from salts such as sodium glyphosate (a weedkiller) and potassium nitrate (a fertiliser). Potassium nitrate is also the main component of gunpower, an explosive mixture put together by Guy Fawkes and mischievous schoolchildren.

Many common medicines are, in fact, salts, with sodium penicillins and sodium valproate (epilim, an anti-epileptic) just two of many examples; the formation of a salt gives extra stability to the active ingredient, improves its solubility and allows the medicinal ‘warhead’ to cross cell membranes to get to the target. Indeed, finding the right salt to partner a biologically active molecule is an important phase of drug development, called drug formulation.

Students represent their school at the Salters’ Institute Festival of Chemistry 

Image credit: www.theoaksacademy.co.uk 

Reflecting all this modern activity around the manufacture and use of salts, one of the current major aims of the Salters’ Institute is to promote the appreciation of chemistry and related sciences at the critical student ages 11 – 14, when career choices begin to be made, encouraging career paths in the UK chemical and allied industries as well as the teaching of chemistry. To these ends, core activities of the Institute include science curriculum development for schools (with the University of York) and the Salters’ Festivals of Chemistry, which are held annually in about 45 Universities and involve practical challenges and fun lectures.

So salts, Salters and Budleigh Salterton are intertwined. The town flourished on an age old salt industry. Salters from this area joined the Worshipful Company of Salters and some, such as Roger Conant, spread their influence overseas. Already salts are important in many aspects of our lives and an even greater impact of salts in medicines, modern agriculture and climate control is being promoted by the venerable Salters’ Institute.

Prof Roberts chairs the Conant 400 Group. The Group is promoting awareness of the forthcoming 400th anniversary of the arrival of Roger Conant (1592-1679) in America. Conant sailed to the New World a few years after the 1620 Pilgrim Fathers. He is respected for what has been described as his "attitude of tolerance and conciliation".  

You can follow the Conant 400 Group's progress at www.conant400.blogspot.com  and/or join the Facebook Conant 400 Group  here.

You can access other posts on this blog by going to the Blog Archive (under the ‘About Me’ section), and clicking on the appropriate heading.