Saltmaking
This area used to have a thriving industry of salt-making, from pre-Roman times right up until 1571, with many salterns all along the Lincolnshire coast. We can still see traces of the old salterns, where sea salt was dried out to produce dry salt crystals.
The significance of Salt-Making to Saltfleetby’s History
The coastal salt-making industry has been central to the story of Saltfleetby’s development as an important settlement. The Romans built roads to transport salt from our coast to other parts of Britain. Essential for preserving food, it was a valuable substance. In the middle-ages our abundance of salt brought prosperity to the area, a sought-after product needed for a variety of industries from tanning leather to cheese-making, and was even used for ceremonial religious purposes. Merchants, fishermen and farmers could preserve produce for trade, enabling meat and fish to be stored over winter. It ensured that the local markets and fairs were important trading events, where food could be bought, and kept fresh for long journeys.
The Romans
When Caesar first landed in Britain in 55 BC he brought with him his “salinators’ or salt-makers – only to find that the native Britons already had their own long established flourishing salt industry. Roman soldiers were partly paid in salt, in fact the word "soldier" comes from the latin “sal dare", meaning “to give salt", and from the same source we get the word “salary". A Roman soldier who didn’t do his duty properly was said to be “not worth his salt", a phrase which is still used today. The bible compliments some men as being “the salt of the earth".
The Romans called a coastal area of Lincolnshire "Salinae" (place of the saltmakers), believed to be in the Ingoldmells region.
Salt-making in Lincolnshire
The process of extracting the salt from sea water (brine) to form crystals of sodium chloride that could be used for many purposes, has been taking place along the Lincolnshire coast at least since the iron age.
Our coast was well suited to salt-making, having all the natural resources and features necessary to enable a thriving industry:
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There was a wide expanse of saltmarsh and estuaries supplying brine, and clay with which to make biquetage (coarse pottery) to make toughs and line the tanks.
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Natural hollows in the march and tidal creeks could be utilised to collect brine.
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There’s plenty of wind along the Lincolnshire coast to aid the evaporation of saltwater.
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There was also plenty of nearby supplies of peat that could be dug and burnt for fuel to heat the brine.
Map showing Lincolnshire's known iron age saltern sites
Iron-Age Salt Making Technique
From the late iron age and into the Roman period, local clay was used to make briquetage troughs and clay-lined settling tanks. into which brine was bucketed in.
It was left to settle, so the sand and silt falls to the bottom, then the clean brine was put into containers for boiling. It needed to be moved from container to container as the salt crystalised
This was a big industry involving many tasks: digging clay to make containers/bricatage, tending the hearths, move crystalising brine from container to container, digging the peat, transporting the peat to the site and the salt away. A lot people would have been involved for much of summer season.
Diagram of possible shapes of troughs, (a) = gutter-shaped trough from mid iron age. Also shapes of the pedestals on which they stood and the clips that held them together.
Fragments of briquetage found in the Lincolnshire Fens, at saltern sites, mostly from containers.
Cross-section diagram showing the heating of brine in troughs on a hearth, iron age method to evaporate the water and produce salt crystals.
Illustration of a salt-making at Morton, near Bourne, showing people performing various jobs such as digging the clay to make containers, tending the hearths, digging peat, transporting peat to the site and salt away from the site.
Many fragments of briquetage have been found at known iron-age salt-making sites along the coast. Ingoldmells was a centre for salt-making as this photo taken in the 1980s shows: very many pieces of clay biquetage on the beach.
Photograph taken in the 1980s of Ingoldmells beach showing many fragments of briquetage, broken pieces of containers, pedestals, clips and hearths, made from clay, which were used for salt-making in the area in the iron age.
From the 3rd Century AD to the Middle Saxon period changes to the method of salt-making occurred. There were significant floods around the coast, which made things difficult for the salt makers, but salt continued to be made in our area and flourished as a a thriving industry during the medieval period.
New Method: Sand-Washing
This new method was in operation by the middle to late Saxon period. It involved scraping salt-laden muddy foreshores after the fortnightly spring tides. In Lincolnshire the process was called ‘muldefang’, the salt-caked sand from the spring tide line was placed it in a trench or ‘kinch’ along with sea water. This became a filtration system, resulting in a stronger brine, the specific gravity of which could be tested by floating an egg on it. The resultant brine was boiled in lead pans (first used from late Roman period) to extract the salt. The salt crystals had to be scooped out as they formed on the surface of the water and on the sides of the container, without allowing the pot to boil dry and cause impurities in the product.
Mounds of Waste
This method resulted in a great deal of waste consisting of the leftover desalinated silt which was left behind in huge mounds. This industrial waste of mounded desalination silt heaps could be huge and many mounds are still visible today, showing exactly where the salt-making sites were. Though some have been lost by being ploughed and levelled by farmers over the years, many are still visible in our area, as can been seen more clearly on lidar images. The bumps and mounds dotting the landscape around Skidbrooke, Saltfleet, Somercotes, Donna Nook and many at Marshchapel show where there used to be salterns.
A Sand-washing filtration system
Map showing late Saxon and Medieval Salterns in Lincolnshire. Numbers indicate how many were in use in Domesday
Yellow area showing location of Earthworks of probable medieval salterns, first identified on aerial photographs to the west of Saltfleet.
Lidar view of the same area west of Saltfleet, showing more clearly the waste mounds associated with the site of a saltern
Slide to Compare Satallite and Lidar Images of Saltern Mounds in our Area
Satellite image overlaid with lidar image of the Marshcahpel area, showing the mounds from old medieval saltern waste silt deposits
Comparison of satellite with lidar image of the fields south of North Somercotes, near Lakeside Park, showing the silt mounds left over from former medieval salterns that used to operate in this area.
The End of Salt-Making in Lincolnshire
Significant changes took place in the 1300s that brought about the end of salt-making in our region. Cheaper French imports were hard to compete against and the black death caused much disruption. The coastal flooding of the 1570s caused damage to many salt-making sites in this part of Lincolnshire. An account of the great flood of 1571 noted that in Marshchapel “all the salt cotes were utterly destroyed”.
The natural peat used for fuel was diminishing in Lincolnshire, whereas in Scotland and Newcastle they made use of coal as a fuel for their salt-making industry. Therefore the Lincolnshire salt-making industry went into a gradual decline until coming to an end entirely in the early 1600s.
References
Picture Credits
Trough and other briquetage shapes diagram, Briquetage fragments, reconstruction of iron age fenland salt production cross section hearth, illustration of salt-making at Morton, photo of Ingoldmells beach, sand filtration trough and map of Saxon and Medieval Salterns by Hilary Healey: all from Tom Lane, Minerals from the Marshes.
Map of Earthworks believed to be Salterns near Saltfleet: Map: Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.
Lidar view of salterns earthworks near Saltfleet: https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map
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References
Tom Lane, Mineral from the Marshes: Coastal Salt Making in Lincolnshire, lecture, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3qicOJLqIo
​Dave Went, Pre-industrial Salterns, Historic England, edited by Joe Flatman, Sarah-Jane Hathaway and Pete Herring, October 2018
Tom Bates, The Romans in Derbyshire, https://www.peakdistrictonline.co.uk/the-romans-in-derbyshire/