EXPLORATION OF SOME " RED-HILLS IN ESSEX. l8l 



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 Sohmy, of the 

 ancient methods of manufacture at the saliiud is informing, and 

 no apology is necessary for quoting it : — 



" In its salt-works the Sol way possessed an industry of great importance and 

 high antiquity. At intervals all along both its Scottish and English shores there 

 were salines 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, 

 sleech 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 ' lunches ' 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 salinoc. 



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. 



