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A HISTORY OF SALT-MAKING IN ESSEX.
By MILLER CHRISTY, F.L.S., President E.F.C.
(With Plates xxx, xxxi, and xxxii).
[Read 7th April 1906].
THE English salt-manufacturing industry has been concen-
trated so long and so completely in the rock-salt districts
of Cheshire and Worcestershire that it is practically extinct
everywhere else in Britain. It will be news, therefore, to most
people—even to Essex people—that salt is still made in Essex.
And not only is this the case, but the industry is one of the
very oldest now existing in the county. There is clear
documentary evidence that it has been carried on here con-
tinuously since the time of King Edward the Confessor (1041-
1066), nearly a thousand years ago, and there can be little or no
doubt that it is really very much older. It seems probable that
the industry originated in Essex before the time of the Romans.
In any case, it had become of considerable importance in Saxon
days. By Norman times, it had grown to a large industry—at
least as important, probably, as in any other English county,
except, perhaps, Sussex; and it continued to be of great
importance with us right through the Middle Ages and modern
times, down to about a century ago, when it declined greatly.
At the present time, it is carried on at only one small, though
prosperous, establishment. It is of the history of this very
ancient, interesting, and necessary industry that I propose to
treat in what follows.
Salt-making, like many of our more ancient industries, has left
a record of its former prevalence in the county in our modern
place and field names. In the first place, the industry has given
name to one of our Essex parishes—namely Salcot, at the head
of Salcot Creek—in which, undoubtedly, there once existed (as
in not a few adjacent parishes) at least one "salt-cote"1 at
which salt was made. Then, again, in the parishes which abut
upon the many creeks, estuaries, and inlets on our coast, there
are not a few fields called by names which show that salt-works
formerly existed in them.2 Such are "East Salts" in Great
1 The New English Dictionary defines a "salt-cote" as "a place where salt was wont to be
made on the sea-shore." Originally, no doubt, it was the small shed or "cote" in which
the manufacture was carried on. "Cote" appears frequently in English, meaning a small
building used as a residence ("cot" or "cottage"), or as a shelter for small animals ("dove-
cote" or "sheep-cote"), or for making or housing anything ("peat-cote" or "salt-cote").
2 See Mr. W. C. Waller's "List of Essex Field Names" in Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc.,
n.s., vol. v., p. 174; vi., pp. 79 and 275; vii., pp. 87 and 319; viii., p. 200, and ix., p. 267. The
extensive "saltings" round our coast have, of course, no connection with salt-making.