198 A HISTORY OF SALT-MAKING IN ESSEX.
Thurstable), which form the northern half of our coast-line..
That this really was the case may be doubted. One cannot help
thinking that many salt-pans must have existed in the four
other Hundreds which form the southern half of our coast-line
(namely, Dengie, Rochford, Barstable, and Chafford), but that,
for some reason, they were not entered on the returns furnished
by those who made the Great Domesday Survey.
At all events, it is certain that salt has been made, at some
time or another, on this southern portion of our coast-line, as is
proved by the field-names referred to above and other information
given hereafter. In Dengie Hundred, on the north bank of the
Crouch, there is still (as Dr. Laver has pointed out to me) a farm
bearing the name of "Salt-coats," situated at the head of
Clement's-Green Creek.9 Further, Benton says10 that "indications
of old saltcotes or salt-pit" are to be found all along the south
bank of the Crouch (in Rochford Hundred), from Hockley to
Paglesham. In regard to Paglesham, Dr. Laver writes me as
follows:—
"About 1820, when my father was tenant of East Hall, a marsh of thirteen
acres, lying next the sea-wall and known as Salt-pan Marsh, was in grass. Its
surface was very uneven, by reason of the large number of shallow ponds it
contained—the pans in which sea-water had been evaporated formerly for salt-
making. As my father wished to grow corn on it, he decided to level it, which
he did during one winter by means of spade labour, thereby adding to the farm a
most productive field. For many years after this, it was not uncommon for men
working in the field to pick up small silver and copper coins—some, I believe,
of the time of Charles II. : others, I fancy, earlier."
" I do not know when these salt-works ceased working; but there is evidence
that they were in work so far back as the time of Queen Elizabeth. The
materials of the store-houses were known to have been brought away alter it fell
into disuse and to have been used at East Hall in the erection of a barn, which
was still standing in 1867. These timbers were of oak and were clearly of the
age stated. Many of them retained grooves which had been intended to
accommodate sliding window-shutters."
That salt-making continued to be a flourishing industry on
the Essex coast throughout the Middle Ages is clear from the
many references to it which occur in wills of the Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Centuries.
Thus, in 1497, John Beriffe the Elder, merchant, of
Brightlingsea, left, for the purchase of two bells for the parish
9 It is marked on Chapman and Andre's Map of Essex (1777)
10 Hist. Rochford Hund., p. 286.