193 

 A HISTORY OF SALT-MAKING IN ESSEX. 



By MILLER CHRISTY, F.L.S., President R.F.C. 



[With Plates xxx, xxxi, and xxxil). 



[Read yth 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 Ttans, Essex Archcrol. Soc, 

 n.s., vol. v., p. 174 ; vi., pp. 79 and 273 ; vii., pp. 87 and 319 ; viii., p. 200, and ix., p. 267. The 

 extensive " saltings " round our coast have, of course, 11c connection with salt-making. 



