THE WATER TIN QUART

There was, in the early eighteenth century, a craft plying the Estuary called the ‘Water Tin Quart’. This is according to a thin book about Topsham by D.M. Bradbeer called ‘The Story of the Manor and Port of Topsham’ and published by Town and Country Press in 1968. Mr Broadbeer doesn’t reveal his source but he must have found one.

The business of the ‘Water Tin Quart’ was no less curious than its name. It sailed up and down the Estuary from Topsham to Exmouth Bar where it laded a cargo of sea water which it carried back to a salthouse in Topsham. (Meekin's salt manufactory at Riversmeet which gets a mention under 'Saltworking' in the Topsham-Exton Cycle Walkway Environmental Statement.) At the saltworks the sea water was transferred into a huge cauldron. There it was boiled until salt granulated.

The name ‘Water Tin Quart’ must have been a Georgian joke. Perhaps there was something about the lines of the vessel that reminded its owner, the salt boiler John Meacham, more often known as John Meekin, of a tin quart measure. She must have made the trip more or less every navigable tide to keep the business going. She would have been a familiar sight on the river.

Salt, of course, was much in demand in the eighteenth century on the Estuary because of the cod fishing off the Newfoundland coast. The ships that carried the fishermen across the Atlantic could not set off without a hold full of salt. The enterprising Mr Meekin, according to D.M. Bradbeer, went on to bring in rock salt by sea from Liverpool, to take his business to what is now the Bridge Inn, and to make a small fortune.

SALT

Ursula Brighouse in her fascinating history of Woodbury, "A View from the Beacon" makes much of the mystery of how Woodbury Salterton came by its name. All the clues, and they are listed, seem to point to Woodbury Salterton being named after "salt-workers or salt-sellers engaged in some sort of storing and distributing business connected to the salt trade." and yet, "it is hard to see, looking at the map, how Woodbury Salterton could have been on a direct route leading from any of the known saltpans to an inland market."

But what if salt was being produced in quantity on the Exe estuary? Surely then Woodbury Salterton would be a likely place to store salt for onward distribution.

In Charles Vancouver's "General View of the Agriculture of the County of Devon" which was published in 1808, he writes the following:

"In the parish of Dawlish there is a large proportion of coarse, though improvable land. A large range of sand-hills extend south-westerly from the mouth of the river Axe:" (This a typographical error for Exe)" these are chiefly appropriated as a warren; some of their lower parts have been enclosed with a view to improvement, but the rank driving sand of which the surface is composed, defeated the undertaking. Among these sand-hills are some lagoons or lakes of salt water, where the making of salt has lately been renewed with the prospect of answering very well."

So there was at least one saltern on the Exe at Dawlish Warren. This is the only reference I have seen to it but there must be more about this nineteenth century initiative. Vancouver writes here of a renewal and salterns can be very ancient and it is not unthinkable that salt was being made on the Warren and/or elsewhere on the Estuary before ever Woodbury Salterton got its name.