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John Saltmarsh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dr John Saltmarsh (born 7 May 1908, Cambridge, England, died 25 September 1974), was a historian and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.
The son of Winnifred and H.A. Saltmarsh, he grew up at Oakington, near Cambridge, where his father farmed four hundred acres.
He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk, and won a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge at the age of seventeen. He gained a First in History.
Saltmarsh was elected as a Fellow of King's at the age of twenty-two. He became a full lecturer for the College and for Cambridge University in 1937 and was appointed as college librarian.
At the start of the Second World War, he was recruited to work at Bletchley Park, but after the war he returned to King's. In the years that followed, he lectured in Economic History for the University and published several works. His history of King's College itself forms part of the Victoria County History of Cambridgeshire, while his book 'Plague and Economic Decline in the Later Middle Ages' was influential.
Saltmarsh retired from college teaching in 1971, fell seriously ill in 1972, and died on 25 September 1974 at the age of sixty-six. He was unmarried and had spent most of his life in the same set of rooms at King's, where he was looked on as an eccentric bachelor don. His set of rooms was much envied, and after his death to avoid deciding who should have them the College Council made them into common rooms, now called the Saltmarsh Suite (dining room and reception room) in his memory.