A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



doubt that substantially the same primitive and laborious mode of manufacture prevailed 

 from early times. 1 



Mr. Neilson cites a work published in 1612, in which we read that on 

 the banks of Solway 



the country people gather up the sand within the flood marke, bringing it to land, and 

 laying it in great heapes, etc., etc. . . . there is made thereof good white salt after the 

 temperance of the weather. This place is called the Salt coats. 



He also tells us that he saw ' at Saltcoats in Ayrshire, in the summer of 

 1887, an old deserted saltpan surviving its usefulness by half a century,' 

 that ' reminiscences of these saltworks occur in the place-names of the 

 sea-board parishes ' about the Solway, as in a ' Saltcots ' on the shore of 

 Carlaverock parish, ' Lady Saltcots ' in Ruthwell, and a ' Saltcots ' on the 

 southern or English shore. 2 



No apology is needed for dealing in some detail with an industry 

 which, though long defunct, gave its name to an Essex parish the only 

 one of that name in England and of which the memory is preserved 

 by lesser place-names in the county far to the south of the district 

 where alone it flourished at the Survey. 3 



The Domesday vineyards of Essex can hardly be included among 

 its industries, as they were only intended to provide wine for the use of 

 the lord himself ; and they are of sufficient interest to deserve separate 

 treatment. In a paper on the subject I have argued that, contrary to 

 general belief, the Normans reintroduced into England the culture of the 

 vine to provide themselves with the drink to which they had been 

 accustomed on the other side of the Channel. 4 The evidence for this 

 proposition is largely drawn from Essex. Domesday proves that the 

 vineyards existing at the time of the great Survey had been often 

 planted since the days of the Confessor ; that they had not, in some 

 cases, yet begun to bear ; that they were almost universally reckoned 

 by ' arpents,' a foreign measure ; and that they are normally found on 

 manors held in the lord's hand and probably containing a lord's residence. 

 By ' lord ' I here mean a ' baron ' or tenant-in-chief. The last of the 

 above four points is well illustrated in Suffolk, where Ixworth, the most 

 northerly point reached by the vine in the east of England, and Clare, 

 on the Essex border, were both the capita of baronies. Of the vine- 

 yards at these two places, that of Clare at least had been planted since 

 the Conquest. 



In Essex, if not in all England, the most interesting vineyard is 



1 Annals of the Solway (1899), pp. 44-51. 



2 Mr. Neilson has observed ' 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 " kinches " or pits once used in the salt manufacture ... no unfit 

 memorials of a dead industry' (p. 51). 



3 In the papers of Mr. W. C. Waller, F.S.A., on ' Essex Field Names,' we detect, in Tendring 

 Hundred, a 'Salters field' and 'Sailers 10 acres' at Great Oakley, and a ' Salcots' at Brightlingsea ; in 

 that of Dengie a ' Home Saltcoats ' at Stow Maries and a ' Salt Coat Marsh ' at Burnham ; in that of 

 Rochford a ' Saltpan Marsh ' at Paglesham, a ' Saltreach field ' at Eastwood, and ' East Salts ' at Waker- 

 ing. There is also a ' Salts ' at Barking (see Essex Arch. Trans, [n.s.] vols. vi. vii.). Dr. Laver states 

 that the Paglesham saltpans were visible down to 1820. 



4 Essex Arch. Trans, [n.s.] vii. 249-51. 



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