INDUSTRIES 



ashes, there being a pan made in the floor betwixt 

 every furnace, which is made of brick, for which also 

 there is a cover, there is boiled and made into lumps 

 of hard and black salt, which is made from the brine 

 which drops from the new made salt, which is placed 

 over a cistern of lead, which cistern is under the floor 

 of the store-house, which is in the end of the building ; 

 These great lumps of hard black salt are sent to Col- 

 chester to make salt upon salt, which are sold for a 

 greater price than the rest, because without these at 

 Colchester they cannot make any salt. These twenty- 

 four pans have only twelve furnaces and twelve fires, 

 and are erected in this manner, all being square and of 

 like proportion. They are placed by two and two 

 together, one against the other ; the six pans in the 

 highest rank, the bottom equal with the top of the 

 lower. The highest pans are twice filled and boiled 

 till it begins to draw toward salt, then a spiggot being 

 pulled out, the brine thus prepared runs into the lower 

 pans, which brings it to a larger proportion of salt 

 than otherwise ; gains time and saves fire, because it 

 must be longer boiled in the other pans, and would 

 spend fire, which is saved by reason of the heat which 

 derives from the furnace of the upper pan, which by a 

 pass ige is conveyed under the lower pan, which passage 

 is about half a yard broad in the bottom, and is, at 

 the top, of the breadth of the pan, which rests upon a 

 brick wall, which is of the thickness of one brick at top, 

 and this concavity under the lower pans is shaped 

 slopewise like unto a kiln, narrow in the bottom and 

 broad at the top ; and this heat, which is conveyed 

 under and makes the lower pans to boil, comes to- 

 gether with the smoke which hath no other passage, 

 under these pans through loop-holes or pigeon-holes, 

 which is conveyed into a chimney, (a double rank 

 thereof is placed in the middle of this building) be- 

 twixt which is a passage for a man to walk. In the 

 middle of every these chimneys is there a broad iron- 

 plate, which is shaped to the chimney, which, as it 

 stops and keeps in the heat, so it being pulled out 

 abates the heat." 



He estimates the salt produced in all the pans 

 to be worth jT 1,500 a year, and the clear annual 

 gain ;^505. The workmen received 145. a 

 week, three men and one woman did the work. 

 Lead pipes connected the various pans with the 

 sump where the brine was stored, the sea water 

 flowing into the brine pit at high tide. Stone 

 walls surrounded the pans, and a roof of boards 

 protected them. The size of the pans probably- 

 varied, those seen by Sir William Brereton were 

 made of iron and were 3^^ yds. broad by 5 yds. 

 long, and f yd. deep.'^ 



In 1630 the exportation or salt from the 

 Shields district was prohibited. From 1635 to 

 1639 the North and South Shields salt-pan owners, 

 acting with some Londoners interested in the 

 trade, made a determined effort to obtain the 

 monopoly of salt for the whole kingdom. They 

 induced Charles I to give them a charter. The 

 king prohibited the erection of new salt-works 

 on the sea coast between Berwick and Southamp- 



" Sir William Brereton, op. cit. 

 " One of these salt-pans is still to be seen in the 

 garden of the Old Bent House, South Shields. 



2 



ton by anyone except the Shields Company, and 

 Nicholas Murford and Christopher Haworth, of 

 Yarmouth, upon pain of demolition ; the sole 

 right of manufacturing salt for the port towns 

 was put into their hands. In return for these 

 privileges the company agreed to make suflficient 

 good and merchantable salt for both home con- 

 sumption and fishing expeditions, and at no time 

 to allow the price to exceed ^5 the wey for home 

 use, and 50X. for fishing expeditions. They also 

 entered into a contract to pay a duty of 10s. a 

 Vfey to the king for the former, and 35. ^.d. a 

 wey for the latter. But the charter could be 

 annulled at the end of three years in case a 

 better way of making salt were discovered.^* 

 But the affair was a fiasco ; these seventeenth- 

 century promoters came from London, bought 

 out some of the pan owners, coerced others to 

 join the enterprise, though a third, in spite of 

 royal pressure, refused either to join the company 

 or to stop manufacturing. It was not until the 

 promoters had spent j^ 14,000 buying pans, build- 

 ing houses, and organizing the trade that they 

 realized in what a precarious position they were. 

 A rival scheme had been got up by Murford, 

 backed by the London fishmongers, and Charles 

 was playing off one company against the other in 

 order to obtain better terms for himself; Sir 

 Robert Heath, however, gave his decision in 

 favour of the northern salt owners. But Yar- 

 mouth refused to fetch the salt from Shields, 

 declaring that the plague there rendered its im- 

 portation a menace to life, and when the company 

 sent the salt to Yarmouth by their own em- 

 ployees, the men were seized and so seriously 

 ill-treated that they appealed to the council for 

 protection. Nor was outside competition the 

 company's only trouble ; they owned 157 pans, 

 but George Harle, James King, Cuthbert Hunter, 

 Margery Harle, and Katherine Roe, who owned 

 among them forty-five pans in Shields, refused to 

 pay the king's duty, and were, therefore, able to 

 undersell the company. By 1639 the company 

 had resigned their patent and were being threat- 

 ened with prosecution by the attorney-general 

 for non-payment of arrears of duty amounting 



Misfortune dogged the footsteps of the Shields 

 salt-pan owners. They had expended much 

 capital in removing the rocks and stones before 

 they could erect their wharves and staithes ; they 

 even claimed to have improved by this means the 

 navigation of the Tyne. As soon as their pans 

 were erected the dean and chapter claimed the 

 site as spare church lands and forced them to 

 take leases. During the Civil War, the Scots 

 destroyed the pans, as belonging to royalists, 



'' P.R.O. Doc. Chas. I, 23 Dec. 1635, 16 ; Orig. 

 R. II Chas. I, 75 ; 12 Chas. I, 156. 



" S.P. Dom. Chas. I, 1635-6, vol. 312 ; 1636-7, 

 vols. 335, 344; 1637, vol. 362 ; 1639, vol. 441, 

 No. 56. 



97 38 



