Wednesday, 21 October 2015

Buy a Copy of John Henry Cooke 1848-1928 'a very worthy gentleman'

A&A Fielding Ltd have published a second book through the on demand service of Blurb.
John Henry Cooke was the first clerk to the Winsford Local Board, Cheshire and was solicitor for those promoting the Brine Pumping (compensation for subsidence) Bill of 1881 and for the second Bill which became an Act in 1891.
Some years ago Andrew and Annelise Fielding bought a copy of JH Cooke's book describing the celebrations that took place in Cheshire to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in which he had written notes about his life and his work dedicated to the people of Winsford. The notes describe his life and his education as he trained to become a solicitor and the sadness from which he never really recovered following the death of two of his sons in the Great War. His library about the salt industry in Cheshire was used by Albert F Calvert while Calvert was compiling his book Salt in Cheshire published in 1915.


Wednesday, 7 October 2015

Separating the Salt from the Sand

Photo sent from the Morecambe Bay Partnership of the talk 'Separating the Salt from the Sand' last Saturday at Silverdale.
A room full of people interested in the enigmatic, historic salt making process of washing salt from the sands and silts of Morecambe Bay. Hopefully the Morecambe Bay Partnership, through the Headland to Headspace programme will begin to seek out some of the sites mentioned in documents
The talk was an introduction to the process, which is little understood, and will lead to further work to understand how the process was carried out around the Bay from Barrow to Fleetwood.
Some members of the audience had already started personal research projects, making salt themselves, studying the monastic records or transcribing inventory records. Still lots to do though.
Hopefully we will be able to give a demonstration of the process during an event next summer.