Samphire

As a child it was a treat to go “down the marsh” to Shep White’s to pick samphire, usually late summer in September. We would pick it from where it had been washed by the tide and take it home, much to my mother’s disgust. Once home, Dad would wash it, trim it and put it in vinegar from which he would eat it over the next couple of days. I wasn’t that keen on it, preferring to nibble it as I picked it enjoying its saltiness. Other people down my street would blanch it in boiling water and eat it as a vegetable, typically alongside boiled ham.

As a child I used to marvel at it being sold in the window of Hayes fishmonger near the High Bridge in Spalding, or on the market stalls on a Tuesday and Saturday, when I knew it was freely available down the marshes of the Wash. When we visited the Norfolk coast we would see it being sold in front of people’s houses at a price three times that in Spalding, Boston or Holbeach markets.

As I’ve grown older my tastes have changed and I like samphire in the small amounts that you find it served in restraunts. The last time I ate it was at Riley’s Fish Shack, eating it with lobster sat in King Edward’s Bay, Tynemouth, a far cry from the vinegar soaked samphire of my childhood.

Samphire is a name given to several different plants, but the one I am familiar with is marsh-samphire. The name, like so many food names has a French derivation; in this case it is thought to have derived from the French Sainte Pierre or Saint Peter, the patron saint of fishing, but in England it was called glasswort due to its use in glass making.

Glasswort used to be burned for its ash as a source of soda, or calcium carbonate, and as a result, as glass industries developed in England in the 14^th century, the glass workshops were usually located on the coast near to the source of samphire.

With an industrial need for samphire in some regions large gangs were used to pick it, typically women and children. The development of lime kilns in coastal and agricultural areas took over the old source of calcium carbonate, as a result glasswort was hardly used in glass making from the eighteenth century onwards. However, the large scale picking of samphire did continue with large gangs used in Dublin, Cardiff, Bristol and Liverpool for the pickling industry. One of the earliest adverts I have found for pickled samphire is from the 1730’s at Elizabeth Jones Old Pickle Ketchup and Tea Ware Shop at Upper Blind Quay in Dublin. The list of pickles is huge and I imagine the quantity of jars of pickles being akin to some of the Polish and Eastern European shops I have been into in Spalding and Peterborough.

Samphire picking tended to be greatest where there was a nearby population to buy it with cities like Dublin, Liverpool and Cardiff being significant. On the Wash picking of samphire commercially was done by small gangs seasonally with Kings Lynn seeing gangs of children used to picked samphire into the 1880’s. Not just gangs, but families would send their children out to pick samphire by themselves from the age of six for a little extra income seasonally, sometimes with tragic consequences. In August 1895 we see Robert Green and Isaac Hinds, both seven years old, drowned in the channel of the River Ouse whilst picking samphire.

The commercial picking of samphire was at one point large enough that in 1895 the Lincolnshire Advertiser contemplated whether Boston was missing out:

“Samphire is only to be found on certain portions of the coast, and Lincolnshire is particularly favoured – when compared with the seashore of other counties – in this respect. At Pilling near Liverpool hundreds of people are now engaged in gathering the herb which when pickled is said to find a good market in the neighbouring towns. I don’t know whether such an industry could be started on a small scale near Boston, but the samphire – of which 99 per cent of Londoners have never heard – would find a ready sale if well pushed. Cockneys always rush for a new thing.”

Commercial samphire picking seasonally has continued into modern times with adverts for gangs to work evenings on the marsh from Boston and Kings Lynn found into the 1990’s. But, the hazards, knowledge and cost made viability of this very low on the Wash.

Samphire was generally recognised as a sign of the quality of grazing available on the marsh behind where it grew. As such, when grazing marshes came up for sale great play was made of it being a “samphire marsh”. Some landowners sought to protect their marshes from samphire being taken, and this has been a source of controversy right up to the modern era with locals vehemently defending this local custom as a right. This has sometimes seen vociferous conflicting arguments from land owners and conservation organisations with local people asserting their right to pick samphire. From such battles arose various characters, old wildfowlers, farm workers, not least amongst these in the late twentieth century was Mrs June Kenton who became known as “The Queen of the Marsh” or “Lady of the Marsh”. However, the key is who is picking the samphire in the wisdom of Mr. Justice Joyce in the 1890’s when he was approached by the Rev. James Caudwell Gardner to obtain damages and an injunction against Richard and Robert Ashton from gathering and carrying away samphire from his land in the Chancery Division court in London:

“His Lordship asked who were the wretched defendants. Unless they were people of substance, he always thought such actions were oppressive.”  In such a way the Judge demarcated between the commercial business operator picking and processing samphire and the coastal local earning a few extra bob. Whilst this case was about marshland near Liverpool it was noted and commented upon in many Lincolnshire and Norfolk papers around the Wash. Thus may the casual samphire picker continue unimpeded.

The best samphire on the marsh is washed by the tide.