[ ... back to main menu for this book]
Salters’ Company (The) do not possess a strictly beautiful building, however commodious and comfortable it may be. It was built in 1827, and is notable for its acoustic properties. A portrait of Sir Sills Gibbons, ex-lord mayor, painted by Wells, R.A., hangs in the anteroom, and a portrait of the Duke of Wellington on horseback is on the staircase. A fine old carved chair, once the master’s, now the hall porter’s, stands in the vestibule; and the details of a bill of fare for fifty salters in the year 1560 are interesting, as illustrating the rise in price of provisions during the last three centuries. The trade of a salter nowadays includes cochineal, logwood, and chemical preparations.
Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879