A facinating insight into the life and times of Cyril Osborne who ran the Maldon Crystal Salt Company for over fifty years.

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Introduction

As a tribute to my father I have written his biography, for I know he would have been pleased for his memories, and experiences to be put into print – they are now a part of history, bygones, never to return, only seen in the imagination through his words.

He was born in the era when it was believed that little children should be seen and not heard, when horses were the main source of transport and when street corner entertainment with dancing bears and monkeys performing to the sounds of barrel organ music was appreciated.

Interested and observant, he was always able to recall, with feeling, the colourful events that took place at the Rose & Crown, where he was born. His apprenticeship days as an electrical engineer were often hazardous, as well as unusual, compared to those of today.
Finally in 1932 he entered the family business of the Maldon Crystal Salt Company to become a salt maker, carrying on the traditions of the area. Without modern aids it was no easy task – coal carting, stoking furnaces, handling tons of salt each day. It wasn’t until the more prosperous days of the ’70s when modernisation made the salt maker’s life easier. The key to the mould into which Father fitted has been lost forever, for he has taken it with him and, as they say, “They don’t make them like that anymore”.

Gillian Soudah