A HISTORY OF SALT-MAKING IN ESSEX. I95 



■concentrated by evaporation. The resulting brine was then 

 further reduced and the salt crystallised by artificial heat. 



The salt made here in later times (including the present) has 

 been that known as " white salt " — that is, salt made by boiling 

 sea-water by means of artificial heat. This latter process is 

 now carried on nowhere in England (so far as I am aware), 

 except at our one remaining salt factory, having been super- 

 seded everywhere else by the making of salt from rock-salt. 



It seems probable that our Essex coast offers greater facilities 

 for making salt from sea-water than any other part of the coast 

 of England. In the first place, we have many extensive, 

 shallow, narrow-mouthed estuaries, creeks, and inlets of the sea 

 — together, probably, far larger, both in number and in area, than 

 those of any other county. It is easy to understand that salt in 

 large quantities must be deposited by evaporation on the 

 extensive mud-flats and saltings which exist in and around 

 these inlets, and that this salt must be taken up in solution 

 and re-deposited, again and again, by each tide — twice, in fact, 

 in every twenty-four hours — till the water becomes exceptionally 

 salt. Further, these inlets lie on the east coast, where the 

 rainfall is far less than on the west, and the water in them is 

 likely, in consequence, to be less diluted by rain and river-water 

 than the water in similar inlets lying on other coasts where the 

 rainfall is greater. This comparatively-light rainfall and the 

 extent, shallowness, and narrowness of our estuaries and inlets 

 seem likely to cause the water in them to be of higher 

 salinity than the water of other English inlets of the kind. It 

 would be interesting if some of our chemical members would 

 conduct experiments with a view to showing whether this is so or 

 not, and, if so, to what extent. 



However this may be, nearly all our Essex salt-works were 

 situated, not on the open sea-coast, but on the shores of estuaries 

 and inlets, and generally near their heads. Further, in Norman 

 times (as will be seen from what follows), salt-pans were thickest 

 around those inlets of the sea (as Hamford Water ; The Ray, 

 Salcot Creek, and Tollesbury Creek) which were inlets merely : 

 not river estuaries. In these, probably, the water is of even 

 higher salinity than that in the estuaries, as it is not diluted by 

 river water. This is, no doubt, especially the case with Hamford 

 Water, which is of very considerable extent, while its mouth is 



