THE salt ship returned to Nantwich on Wednesday, October 11. The museum's main galleries were closed while the glass cabinet display was set up. The official launch came on Thursday, November 2. (See report below).     

Pictures: Peter Stuart and Carol Smith (Museum Volunteers),

A first glimpse of the salt ship as it is unloaded 

Just checking all is well with the transporter wheels

A tight squeeze at the side gate

The Chairman of Nantwich Museum Trust, Robert Stones, "launches" the ship

The Chairman of Nantwich Town Council (Cllr Steve Hope) and the Mayor Of Crewe and Nantwich (Cllr Howard Curran) 

Malcolm Reid with John and Deborah Conibear at the reception

Curator Susan Pritchard with archaeologists Leigh Dodd and Will Walker of Earthworks

Tom Hughes (Community and Education Officer, right) and Colin Mann (Education Assistant)

Jocelyn McMillan, Crewe and Nantwich Borough Cultural Development Manager, and the Mayoress, Mrs Sheila Curran.

ROBERT Stones, Chairman of Nantwich Museum Trust, welcomed the guests to the event "on this particularly special evening."
   "I would be the first to say that three years ago when I became involved with the Museum that I was completely ignorant about the salt ship. I, like everybody else, thought that it floated on the river. I thought it might have had a mast on it and maybe some oars. And how wrong I was proved to be."

    He recalled the curator, Mrs Susan Pritchard, with sticks going in and out of the museum door. She was trying to work out whether the salt ship would go through the front door.
   Another gaffe: "I said: 'What do you mean - it is going to be sawn up into three sections? This is terrible. Scurrilous. It can't possibly be done.' We had some meetings and explored everything thoroughly and it was marvellous that everybody with their expertise advised us on how the ship should be looked after."
   He thanked the Heritage Lottery Fund for funding the rescue. It had cost £100,000 to get it to the museum. "When you think about the incredible journey it has had over the last two or three years to allow us to see a little bit about the heritage of Nantwich, it has provided excellent value for money."
   He thanked the Schofield brothers (Paul, John and Mark) on whose land the salt ship was found. They went to quite a lot of trouble, he said. The work caused considerable hardship to them as land owners.
   He thanked Cheshire County Council for their full backing, including Gwyneth Jones (former Heritage and Museums Officer) who made it possible to fund the salt ship coming out of the ground; Emma Chaplin (current Heritage and Museums Officer) who slipped into the breach after Gwyneth retired; Jonathan Pepler, County Archivist and Data Protection Officer (2008) and Dr Jill Collens, Project Leader, Environmental Planning (Archaeology). "It couldn't have happened without them."
   Robert also thanked:

• Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council;

• Earthworks Archaeology, especially archaeologists Will Walker and Leigh Dodd;

• Malcolm Reid who helped with so many aspects of the project;

• Jim Spriggs of York Archaeological Trust (now retired) "who told me the ship had to be cut up." He added: "It was either cut it up or have it in a preservation tank for years on end and we might never see it.";

• John and Deborah Conibear of Conibear Design Associates, Manchester, who put the display together;

• Mike Ritchie for the reconstruction drawing of the salt ship; and

• John Brough for videoing the whole salt ship rescue.

THE Chairman of Nantwich Town Council, Cllr Steve Hope, just out of hospital after an operation, said the salt ship was something to do with his town of which he was proud to be Chairman of the Council. "Bringing something of the history of Nantwich back to the town is absolutely marvellous." He was pleased to see so many eminent citizens of the town present.
"When you go outside, tell the people about the salt ship and Nantwich Museum. Tell them to come in," he said.

THE Mayor of Crewe and Nantwich, Cllr Howard Curran, said: "History, to me, means you have to have an imagination. If you haven't got any imagination go home and watch the television. What you have to do with history is to strip back time and keep going backwards. The more research you do the more doors it opens. I think you have a wonderful display here. I, too, wondered 'How the heck did this sail?'
   "I wish I could explain how important it is to children to understand what it was like. History is nothing like it is portrayed on television. I couldn't get across how it really was all those hundreds of years ago. It was a hard life to start with. We really have to explain to children that we have come a long way. That is the beauty of the display."

CLOSING the ceremony, Robert Stones, said: "It is the end of the journey as far as bringing the salt ship to the museum is concerned but in a sense it's the beginning of a journey because what we all must do is capitalise on our investment. It is very important we use it to the advantage of the town, for bringing tourists to the town, for education, and we make it so that the museum moves on to great success."

Also in the Millennium Gallery, where the opening ceremony took place, was a stall showing how salt would have been produced and some of the items it would have been used for. Tom Hughes, Community and Education Officer with Cheshire County Council's Salt Museum in Northwich, and Colin Mann, Education Assistant, were on hand to explain their display.

   Salt was produced in Nantwich on only 12 days a year, and so this was life in the other 353 days. The display of items made with salt included a mini churn for making butter, salt used for the preservation of Cheshire cheese, a leather item representing the town's leather industry, and bread in which salt was used for flavouring - otherwise a bland food item. There was a replica of a three-handled cup found buried in a barrel near to the salt ship.

   The water in the ground around the salt ship stopped bacteria breeding, which would have rotted the wood. And a lot of tableware was made from wood. Elsewhere in the county, wooden items have rotted, and the Nantwich finds helped to fill in the gaps in archaeologists' knowledge, the men explained.

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