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Amelia was the first-born daughter of Caroline and Titus Salt, and her life was lived true to the values held dear by the founder of Saltaire and his wife. Born on 29th Nov 1835 at a time when the young Salt family was living at its Bradford home on North Parade, she may have just remembered the harsh realities of Bradford life before the family moved to the grand estate of Crow Nest, outside Halifax, when Amelia was about eight.

Amelia was to be the eldest of five daughters born to the Salts, and in due course grew up to become her father’s confidential secretary, probably around the time that he consolidated his enterprises in Saltaire in 1853.

Amelia continued in this role for approx two decades, before marrying a leading lay Congregationalist of the time, Henry Wright of Kensington. Wright (a widower) had been the head of a successful railway carriage manufacturing company, the Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Works. He was also a leading light in the London Missionary Society.

Following their 1873 marriage the Wrights lived in Kensington until 1893 when Henry, by this time 73, died. His death actually occurred in Harrogate, and he was buried in a grave that can be seen in the present day in the spa town’s Grove Road Cemetery.

Amelia subsequently left Kensington for Tunbridge Wells – a move her surviving younger sisters, Helen and Ada, were to shortly follow. For the next 20 years Amelia was notably active in the local Congregational Church. She died, aged 78, in 1914.

Amelia appears to have been the first of the Salt family to be cremated. Her ashes were brought north from Golders Green Crematorium to Harrogate, where they were interred in the grave of her late husband Henry.

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