Winner of the Lion Salt Works Museum’s salt & pepper pot competition announced

To celebrate salt and give children and adults a fun ‘lockdown’ activity, the award-winning Lion Salt Works Museum challenged everyone at the end of last year to come up with their own fun idea for a salt and pepper pot.

The competition followed the opening of the quirky, virtual gallery at www.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk that showed a small part of the huge collection of the salt & pepper pots from collector, Andy Brown of Wallasey, Wirral. 

The competition’s winner is Zoe, 12, from Farndon with an imaginative owl and branch salt and pepper pot.  Zoe said: “I love art, drawing and wildlife so at first I thought about drawing a pair of Cheshire cats. But cats are hard to get right so I thought about an owl sitting on a branch. I’m pleased to have won the first prize.”  

The winning drawing and that of two runners up were turned into the real thing, courtesy of the Cheshire Clay Collective, based in Byley. The collective will be holding an exhibition of its work at the Lion Salt Works Museum in the Autumn. 

Zoe received a free annual Family Pass for the Museum and all the winners’ salt and pepper pots will be exhibited in a cabinet in the Museum’s entrance lobby. 

Councillor Louise Gittins, Leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council said: “This was a fun, imaginative competition during lockdown and I’m glad everyone will enjoy looking at these winning salt & pepper pots ‘in person’ now that the Lion Salt Works Museum is open again.”  

The Lion Salt Works Museum tells the story of salt and how it impacted on the people, landscape and industry of the region. In 2015, the Museum was re-opened after a four-year, £10m restoration and features a sound and light show, a ‘subsiding house’ and interactive displays, including an automaton. It has gone on to win nine awards. The Museum is one of the last open-pan, salt-making sites in the world and is so historically important that it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, with the same protection status as Stonehenge and Hadrian’s Wall.  

Pictured - Winner, Zoe (12) with Christine Edghill-Crump who made her paper design into a salt and pepper pot.