Do You Dare Take Ringsend With a Pinch of Salt

 

Before the great factories, before the docks and warehouses transformed the landscape, Ringsend had another commodity at the heart of its prosperity — salt. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the humble crystals that seasoned food and preserved meat and fish helped create an industry of remarkable scale, bringing employment, investment and wealth into the community.

Names such as the Page family, Ambrose Burges, Robert Roe and Flower & McDonald became closely associated with Ringsend’s salt trade. Their enterprises were part of a thriving industrial world that stretched along the waterfront, where salt was processed, stored, transported and sold.

And this was no small local enterprise. By the 1840s, the salt industry was employing around 2,000 people in Ringsend — an astonishing figure that gives some idea of its importance to the community. For generations of local families, the salt works were not simply places of employment; they were woven into the economic and social fabric of Ringsend itself.

But how did a substance that seems so ordinary today become such an important source of employment and prosperity? And what was life like for the thousands of men, women and families whose livelihoods depended upon Ringsend’s salt industry?

To answer those questions, we need to step back into a Ringsend very different from the one we know today — a busy industrial community where the waterfront was alive with workers, carts, boats, warehouses and the unmistakable presence of an industry built on salt.

Courtesy of Cormac Louth

In 1730, The Dublin Gazette printed an advertisement stating,

‘Whereas the Salt Works at Ringsend where Mr Burges (the late famous undertaker and builder of the Salt Works) formerly made the best of salt, are now made by his son Ambrose Burges.’ 

Ambrose, Senior had originally been a merchant and druggist in Donnybrook before becoming a pioneer of salt production in Ringsend, then in its infancy in Ireland. The area where today’s Ringsend Park is located were described as ‘salt marshes’ on numerous maps. Ambrose Senior died September 8^th, 1732, and his son took over the complete running of the business. By 1748 there were two major salt works located north and south of the River Liffey in Ringsend and Clontarf. 

 

Salt has been important in the preservation of fish and the curing of meat for centuries. Salt production dates back to early China and the Romans used salt as a payment option leading to the word ‘salary’ from the Roman word for salt, ‘sal’. Ringsend salt was refined from seawater gathered in salt marshes and was becoming more in demand across Europe.

 

 In the 1760’s the larger of the salt works was being run by Robert Roe, but his success was attracting more competitors to Ringsend. Access to Ringsend was via a bridge across the River Dodder. That bridge was washed away in 1782 by a flood and a replacement wooden bridge, built in 1786, was itself washed away by flood waters just a year later.  In 1787, Roe was instrumental and the main source in financing the rebuilding of the Ringsend Bridge over the Dodder but his efforts proved a short lived as other bridges as it too succumbed to a flood in December 1802. The stone bridge that it used today replaced the previous wooden structures and opened in 1812.

 

Roe had died on March 29^th, 1795, and the business was leased by the owner of the Ringsend Tavern on Bridge Street, John Howard and his business partner in the salt works was Thomas Bray. In 1801 Howard put his tavern up for sale and exited the business following a legal dispute with Bray’s brother Michael. Howard would buy another tavern in the centre of the city after leaving the maritime village.  In 1814, Robert Roe’s son puts the Salt Works up for sale.

 

By the early nineteenth century, salt production in Ringsend becomes even more important as there was a major revival of the fishing industry in the village with the arrival of fishermen from Torbay in the southwest of England.  In October 1826, The Liffey Salt Works, as it became known, a new but smaller works competitor as compared to the Thorncastle Street plant in Ringsend, was located at the corner of Pigeon House Road. In 1826 it was put up for sale following the death of the owner Charles Pentland. Pentland was from Townsend Street and operated the Hibernian Marine Society on Rogerson’s Quay. The Society was set up to educate and look after orphaned children of seafarers. The sale included ‘valuable buildings, dwelling house, stables and extensive stores and warehouses’.  The business was producing 3000-4000 tons of salt annually. By December 1827, it had still not been sold. The problem was the cost of producing the salt. Seawater was heated to evaporation point and the salt crystals were the commodity that remained. The amount of coal needed to reach the temperatures to create the salt became extremely expensive and with the bottle making industry in Ringsend also demanding coal for production, the coal was in high demand. In the mid nineteenth century, the rise and efficiency in production of rock salt also affected the value of the sea salt.

 

By 1835 a ‘Salt Works’ was located at the end of today’s Cambridge Avenue and today’s York Road. It was being operated by James Hill. In 1840, The Evening Post reported,

‘The poor of that very impoverished town called Ringsend are reduced almost to the worst state of human misery by the curtailment of the demand for Irish manufactured salt occasioned by the import of white salt from England at a rate which Irish manufacturers cannot produce the article’.

The newspaper stated at the height of the Ringsend Salt works up to 2,000 were directly or indirectly employed in the salt business in the three main works. On March 5^th, 1842, James Hill was declared bankrupt.

 

The biggest salt works on Thorncastle Street was opened by Theophilus Page (b. 1784) and wife Margaret Cummins. The opened their salt works in 1826. Theo died March 6^th, 1837, with his son William Henry Page taking over.  William was a bit a ‘cad’ as they might say in upper-class English life. He married Joanna Quinlan in 1838 and a year later their first child William John arrived. A number of children followed including Mary Genivieve in 1840, Clarina in 1846 and an unnamed child in 1850 who died shortly after her birth. According to family research William abandoned his wife and children in 1850 and by March 1851 he is listed in the UK census as living near Norwich, Norfolk. The story is somewhat foggy after that, but what is known is that Joanna gave birth to Anna Martha Page in 1852, but that Joanna died just two years later on November 22^nd 1854. In January 1855 in the Boston Pilot newspaper in the United States the following announcement was printed,

‘November 22^nd at the Ringsend Salt Works, Dublin after a protracted illness Mrs W. Page deeply regretted by all acquainted with her admirable discharge of her duties as a wife and a mother.’

William then almost immediately married Thirza Ann Rouse in Norfolk on January 14^th, 1855, and was barely a year married when he died in February 1856

 

By 1850 between the cost of production, the competition from cheaper salt maker in the United Kingdom and taxes, the salt industry in Ringsend was in serious trouble. The three manufacturers in 1850 were William Page, Patrick Kelly and on Fitzwilliam Street, James Pommeret saw his business taken over by James Cusack in 1850.

 

By 1851, Page had a business partner, Daniel Pallin, he was a salt and coal merchant on North Earl Street. Pallin was also described in merchant directories as also a ‘soap boiler and chandler’. He was in business with Page and they had offices at 141 Lower Baggot Street next door to Grants public house, today known as Toners.

 

With Page gone, his business on Thorncastle Street in 1859 was taken over by Mrs. Ellen Egan, who was advertising her Ringsend Salt Works and they were not only producing Irish salt but also importing cheaper salt from Norwich Salt Works. Delivery is available by ship, canal boat, train or efficient horse and cart. Egan’s family own the original Yacht Tavern lower down on Thorncastle street where today’s Yacht is based.  In 1861, The Egan’s salt works was being operated by William Shaw, who had a showroom in Talbot Street.

 

The writing however was on the wall. In June 1870 the Thorncastle Street buildings were for sale following the bankruptcy of Samuel Shelly, this was partly due to a police constabulary report on the state of the Ringsend Salt works which were described as ‘in a filthy state, horse manure, mire and night soil lying in heaps.’ The bankruptcy notification in January 1871 stated that Shelly was in partnership with Robert Falk of Runcorn and William Powell of Liverpool of ‘Samuel Shelly Jnr and Company’.

 

One of the final salt works as this valuable industry died quietly in Ringsend was the Irish Salt Works operated by James Flower & Thomas McDonald on the site formerly owned by Willaim Page but by now there was very little production in Ringsend, Flower and McDonald according to records has two operating pans but were importing most of the salt into Ringsend, packaging it and selling it on.

 

The Ringsend salt industry lasted less than 150 years but like glass production, boat making and fishing, it provided livelihoods to 1000’s in a village that census records showed a population of less than 2,500. In the mid nineteenth century when Ireland was suffering from the catastrophic effects of famine and disease, Ringsend was spared the worst as work, fishing and a true village spirit pulled Ringsend through. However, the salt industry in Ringsend no longer provided certainty of employment and as a result many who worked in the various salt works in Ringsend, packed their bags and emigrated across the Atlantic to America. According to Onondaga Historical Association in New York, it was thanks to those Irish salt workers who arrived in the 1850s turned the Syracuse salt works into one of the most successful in the United States that by the 1870s, Onondaga produced 90% of the United States salt.

 

So next time you are in Ferrari’s or Ianelli’s and they ask if you want salt on your one and one, remember how important salt was to the economy of Ringsend.

 

In our next post we will take a closer look at the early St. Patrick’s Church in Ringsend, why, who and when. The original church lasted from 1858 to 1910 and has an interesting and at time complicated history.