Saffron fields in South Kashmir… England was once centre of the world trade in the spice (Image: Getty)
A warm autumnal breeze ripples through fields of purple crocuses, caressing the delicate blooms and giving off a sweet, honeyed aroma. Scores of harvesters kneel on the paths between the rows of flowers, twisting them free and piling them into wicker baskets. Set back from the fields is a large, open-fronted barn, where workers sit, deftly plucking the three bright red stigmas that protrude from each flower and placing them in trays. These trays are then taken away and dried in charcoal-fired kilns, creating pound after pound of the world’s most exotic and expensive spice – saffron.
Where does this scene take place? Iran, perhaps, which is currently the world’s largest saffron producer, accounting for some 90% of global supply? Or Afghanistan, maybe, which comes in second? Or Kashmir, even? Not a bit of it. The scene described above unfolds in rainy North Essex, but to witness it you’d need to travel back in time to a period when England was the world’s preeminent producer of saffron and the hub of its industry was a pretty market town named Saffron Walden.
My interest in saffron first started in 1999, when I was 21 years old. I was studying French and Italian at university, and was given the third year off and told to go abroad and find a job in order to improve my spoken language. After working for six months as a teacher in Paris, I moved to Venice, where I managed to find a job as a sous-chef in a tourist restaurant called Ristorante al Colombo. I was utterly clueless at first – it was a miracle they didn’t sack me – but as the weeks went by, I improved enough to be placed on the pasta and risotto section.
Author T L Mogford’s thrilling new book explores the English saffron trade (Image: Courtesy Thomas Mogford)
One of the first dishes I learnt was risotto alla milanese, a delicious yellow concoction that takes its golden hue from the tiny pinch of saffron infused in the stock. I had heard of saffron, of course, but it was probably more familiar to me as a Christian name than a foodstuff (the TV show Absolutely Fabulous had been a great favourite in my household growing up).
Perhaps sensing my uncertainty, the head chef – a bald, burly man named Francesco – grabbed the restaurant’s little jar of saffron, then pulled out the stopper and let me sniff at the tangle of short crimson strands inside. I still remember the scent even now – that unique blend of leather, hay and honey… “A word of warning,” Francesco told me, snatching the jar away from my greedy nostrils. “Saffron is worth its weight in gold, so if you waste just one strand…”
As my conversational Italian improved, I began to learn a little more about saffron. The bright red strands were dried stigmas taken from the flowers of the saffron crocus, or Crocus sativus, most of which now grew in Iran. In the past, Venice had been an important gateway for saffron importation to mainland Europe, thanks to its trade links with the Ottoman Empire, and the city had developed a taste for the stuff which still held true today, as risotto alla milanese was one of the restaurant’s bestselling dishes.
Lying awake at night in the restaurant’s garret dormitory, I began to entertain fantasies of writing a historical adventure novel about saffron, the spice that was worth its weight in gold. A heist story maybe, telling of a 16th-century cargo ship that was hijacked on its way to Venice from the spice markets of the Ottoman Empire.
Back home, I finished my degree and embarked instead upon a series of crime novels set in the present day. The years went by, and I’d almost forgotten about my saffron idea when it was reawakened by an unexpected source. An old university friend – known as ‘Dangerous Dave’ thanks to his propensity for student misbehaviour – had surprised everyone by becoming the first of us to settle down and start a family.
Pistils from saffron flowers are turned into spice (Image: Getty)
Having found a job in the City, Dave had moved out of London into the commuter belt – to a market town in Essex called Saffron Walden. Chatting to Dave one evening at a party, I let slip my assumption that Saffron Walden was a new town, given a pretty name in order to lure in the City workers. Dave immediately put me right – Saffron Walden was an ancient place, he told me, named after the saffron industry that had thrived there during the Middle Ages and Tudor times. Memories of Venice, and my saffron story, came rushing back.
But that idea had been predicated upon the exoticism of saffron – the Ottoman Empire, cargo ships sailing up the Grand Canal. Yet here was Dave talking to me about saffron in North Essex. I decided to investigate further – and now, of course, there was the internet to offer instant access to information. And what I found amazed me.
Not only had saffron once been grown in England, but it had been produced in vast quantities – at one point, the English saffron industry was considered the largest in the world, making so much of the spice that some was even exported to the Netherlands. The hub of the industry was indeed Saffron Walden, where so many crocuses were grown that in 1514 Henry VIII had signed a charter changing the town’s name from Chipping (or ‘Market’) Walden to the one we all know today.
Convinced that this might have the makings of a book, I decided to travel to Saffron Walden myself. As Dave was away at work, I headed alone to the local museum, where I threw myself into finding out as much as I could about how this small Essex town had outdone even Venice when it came to saffron.
According to local legend, the origins of the saffron industry could be traced back to 1339, when a pilgrim had returned home from Jerusalem with a single saffron crocus bulb (or ‘corm’) hidden in his palmer’s staff. And it needed to be hidden, because anyone caught stealing crocuses from the Holy Lands would pay for it with his life. It must have been a bold pilgrim who believed that a plant accustomed to the dry, crumbly soil of the Middle East would do well in Essex, but somehow the saffron crocus survived – then went on to thrive so heartily that others in the town began to take notice.
The town of saffron Walden, north Essex, grew prosperous on past saffron trade (Image: Humphrey Nemar / Express)
The reason for this unexpected horticultural success turned out to be the chalk content of the local soil. Its crumbly, free-draining texture served to convince the saffron crocus that it was still at home in the parched lands of the Levant. And though Crocus sativus is sterile, producing no viable seeds, the corms grow smaller ‘daughter’ corms which can be removed from the root and replanted.
As the number of crocuses growing in the town increased, a fledgling industry started up, with those who cultivated the plants coming to be known as ‘crokers’, many of whom grew very rich, particularly when the ‘red gold’ they were producing became prized as a cure for plague, something which was at the forefront of people’s minds in the mid-14th century, when the Black Death tore through the country.
Astonished by what I’d learnt, I set off through the prosperous-looking streets of Saffron Walden, passing ancient, timber-framed townhouses that must surely once have belonged to crokers, and made my way to the enormous church that sits on a hill in the middle of town.
The source of the wealth that had built the largest non-cathedral church in Essex was immediately clear – there were crocus emblems everywhere, and in one corner I even saw an image of a scallop shell, the traditional symbol of pilgrimage, a nod perhaps to the unnamed pilgrim who had first brought saffron to the town.
My next stop was Saffron Walden Library, where I came upon a list of saffron prices down the ages. The year when the spice was at its most expensive was 1665, I saw, when it was selling at a staggering £4, 1d per lb. If I was going to write about an English saffron heist, then it would make sense to set the story at a time when the spice was at its most expensive.
How about 1666, I thought, the year of the Great Fire of London? My protagonist could fall into debt thanks to losses sustained from the fire, then travel to Saffron Walden to try and steal the fruits of the harvest. All that remained was to work out details of the plot. Before I left Saffron Walden, I returned to the museum and bought a small sack of saffron corms, which I planted out in pots in my back garden.
The Saffron Thief by T L Mogford is out now (Image: HarperCollins)
Crocus sativus is autumn-flowering, I had learnt, so as soon as September came, I waited for my corms to sprout. Nothing happened, and like many a naïve gardener before me, I assumed that lack of water must be the problem, and kept the pots damp, praying for growth. Still nothing, and I’d all but given up hope when I happened to open the airing cupboard where I’d left a couple of the corms that I hadn’t planted out. Green shoots were emerging – in my haste to grow some saffron of my own, I had overlooked the tale of the Saffron Walden pilgrim.
Crocus sativus liked it dry, or free-draining at any rate. I had inadvertently killed off my corms through foolish overwatering.
But what was it that had killed off the saffron industry of England? Because by 1720, there were no saffron crocuses being grown in Saffron Walden at all.
Some historians claim that competition from cheaper foreign imports sounded the death knell. Others blame the French, saying a disease known as ‘The Rot’ had found its way across the Channel and decimated the crokers’ profits.
I decided that my book would offer a more colourful reason – that the English saffron industry had been so badly damaged by a massive heist in 1666 that it had never fully recovered. The stuff of fantasy, perhaps, but surely a more fitting finale for the world’s most exotic and expensive spice.
The Saffron Thief by T L Mogford (HarperCollins, £18.99) is out now. T L Mogford is appearing at the Words in Walden Festival 2026 on October 13 at 6.30pm. Visit hartsbooks.co.uk/events for details
