EXPLORATION OF SOME "RED-HILLS" IN ESSEX. 181
of the latter is naturally tempted to suspect some affinity between
the two. In this connection the description of the Scottish
antiquary, Mr. George Neilson, in his Annals of the Solway, of the
ancient methods of manufacture at the salinae is informing, and
no apology is necessary for quoting it:—
"In its salt-works the Solway possessed an industry of great importance and
high antiquity. At intervals all along both its Scottish and English shores there
were salinae or salt-works. These were all situated at places where a loose and
porous clayey sand, called 'sleech,' formed natural salt beds presenting a surface
capable of retaining a very heavy solution of salt after being covered by
the tide. The heat of the summer sun disclosed the salty particles, glittering
on the sleech like hoar frost. From time to time in due season the 'salters,' as
the makers of salt were called, first collected the surface sleech on the salt bed
by a kind of sledge-drag or scraper, called a 'hap,' drawn by a horse, carted it
to the merse or grassy beach, and laid it in heaps beside the place where, after
some time, it was to be filtered. Neither the apparatus nor process of filtration
was complex. A hole dug in the merse formed a 'kinch' or pit; its bottom
and sides were puddled with clay to make it water-tight: on the bottom, above
the clay, peats were laid; the peats in turn were covered with a layer of sods,
sleeeh was put on the sods, till the kinch was nearly filled to the brim, and finally
as much salt-water was added as the kinch would hold. Filtering through the
sleech and the sods the brine at length, when strong enough to float an egg, was
allowed to escape by a tube or spout into a wooden reservoir, out of which it was
lifted and carried in pails to the salt pans. These were broad, shallow, metal
pans, beneath which great fires of peat were lit. After about six hours' boiling
the process was complete; the liquid of the brine was wholly evaporated, and
the pans full of the finished article. The name of Saltcotes was given to the
little cluster of buildings which contained the pans, the 'girnels' or stores in
which the salt was kept, and the dwellings of the salters. Such was the system
pursued on the Solway in the end of last (the eighteenth) century, and there is
small reason to doubt that substantially the same primitive and laborious mode of
manufacture prevailed from early times." Our author noted "holes in the
grassy foreshore, from two to three feet deep, a dozen or thereby wide, and six
or eight across; the bottom is black, and either dry or half-filled with dark and
stagnant water. These are the 'kinches' or pits once used in the salt manufac-
ture. . . . No unfit memorial of a dead industry."
With, perhaps, a few modifications rendered necessary by
peculiarities of the Essex estuarine shores, the above description
of the Solway salters' methods of work might be taken to body-
forth the primitive industrial scenes at our local salinae.
On the supposition that we have in the Red-hills the
remains of salt-works dating from very early times, when
metal vessels were not available, it is no very wild speculation
to suggest that the large, coarse vessels, the fragments of which
are so numerous, were the pans in which the brine was boiled
down to the crystallising point in the old manufacture of salt.