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a family affair Sporting-goods specialists J Salter & Sons has played a key part in polo history for almost 130 years, writes Nigel à Brassard
Preserving its reputation for creating the finest equipment, J Salter &Sons continues to trade to this day
There are many sports that have long been inextricably associated with an equipment manufacturer: Slazenger (lawn tennis), Hardy Brothers (fishing rods and reels), Gilbert (rugby), Holland & Holland and James Purdey & Sons (gun and rifle makers). The brand that has been linked with polo from its outset is J Salter & Sons. In 1927, Salter was able to claim in The Polo Monthly that ‘the majority of the leading players in the polo world have, for years, selected Salter equipment as the correct articles for the game’. James Oliver Salter, the company’s founder, was born in 1847 in Exminster, Devon. Having
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enlisted in the Royal Artillery, he served in India, where polo was a major preoccupation of the British Army. In 1876, he married Alice Walbridge and, in 1880, with a growing family, they returned to England. After 21 years’ service, he retired from the Army. While in India, Salter had built a reputation for the repair of racquets and polo sticks, so decided to set himself up in business as a sports outfitter. The garrison town of Aldershot was the home of the British Army and birthplace of polo in Britain, so it was natural that J Salter & Sons first opened its doors in 1884 in the town. Indeed, two decades earlier, it was in Aldershot
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that ‘Chicken’ Hartopp had read the article in The Field of 20 March 1869 about ‘Hockey on Ponyback’ and then, with five or six fellow officers of the 10th Hussars, had played the first makeshift game of polo in England. J Salter & Sons soon developed a reputation as the leading polo-stick makers. The firm was noted for its high standards and vast stock of well-seasoned polo heads, canes and balls. Salter maintained that the three essentials to a perfect polo mallet were: a perfect grip, a well-balanced and seasoned cane, and a head of the correct weight. The company invited customers to send their favourite polo stick ‘as,
