126 POTASH-MAKING IN ESSEX : A LOST RURAL INDUSTRY.
but I am not sure whether or no the process was further repeated.
Some of my informants say that the process was completed in one
burning. But whether at one or more burnings, I know that when
finished, on raising the ashes which remained, there was seen under
them on the floor of the hearth, a thick coating, several inches in
depth, of a black substance, so hard as to require a pick to break it
up. This mass was the "Black-potash" the workman was en-
deavouring to produce. When sufficient had been obtained, it was
placed in casks or bags and sent to market, and from it those who
carried on the manufacture further produced pearl-ashes, and other
preparations of potash. Potash-making was therefore a most ingenious
and economical process. They first washed all the soluble potash
from the ashes and then concentrated the solution until it was
deposited in a solid form, and this was accomplished by driving off
the water in burning the straw saturated with the lye. Could any-
thing be more simple and economical ? Of course the water might
have been evaporated by boiling the lye in a shallow boiler, but such
a plan would have required a large expenditure of fuel, and conse-
quently would have been expensive.
When I first became acquainted with the manufacture, it was
dying out, as it could not compete with the greater advantages
enjoyed by the makers on the Continent and in America, and in
addition the cheaper soda had quite superseded it for many of the
purposes for which potash was employed, and consequently the trade
was almost gone, and it finally disappeared from the few places where
it lingered in this county, some time about the year 1850. The last
maker I knew died about 1854.
It would appear that Potash-makers were also, sometimes, Soap-
boilers, and this fact explains how it is that in Poll-books of Elections
held in 1741, and before that time, we find voters' names recorded
as "Soap-boilers" who were living in some little country village.
In questioning some' old men, they have told me some Potash-
makers were also Soap-boilers, and used all the potash they made for
this purpose ; a statement easily understood when it is remembered
that nearly all the soap of this period was Potash-Soap and not as
now Soda-Soap.
All this shows that the decay of potash-making and other rural
industries has inflicted a great loss on country districts, and has been
one of the causes producing the depopulation of rural parishes ; a
fact all must be sorry for, on many grounds. Probably in a county