Salt on the Screen: Coast
Find out how the salt-making industry interacted with the changing coastline
Introduction
On the coast, the changing location of the Lincolnshire coastline is deeply intertwined with our knowledge of salt-making. The long coastline facilitated the rise of a salt-making industry in Lincolnshire; while the production of salt in turn helped to shape the Lincolnshire coastline as it appears today.
Map Tour
Early Discoveries
Early Discoveries. Click to expand.
Some of the earliest finds related to Lincolnshire salt-making have been made along the coast. On Ingoldmells Beach, as early as the 19th century local historians and antiquarians were making discoveries of ‘hand-bricks’ - misshapen lumps of clay revealed by the low tides. These hand-bricks are often little more than a piece of clay squeezed within the hand and can date back as far as the Late Bronze Age, 3000 years ago. They show the imprints of palms, fingers, and thumbs. Most of these impressions are small, perhaps suggesting that they were made by a woman or child. The hand-bricks are probably supports, used to raise containers holding saltwater over a fire to facilitate evaporation.
Iron Age and Roman Salt Production
Iron Age and Roman Salt Production. Click to expand.
Producing salt from brine essentially relies on the process of evaporation: the brine is heated until the water evaporates and only the salt remains. While on the continent the heat of the sun was strong enough to achieve this, in Lincolnshire it was necessary to burn fuel, such as peat, to fully evaporate the water.
Briquetage
Briquetage. Click to expand.
The discovery of sites along the coast is often accidental. Salt-making sites usually leave little evidence in the landscape, having been covered by layers of silt and alluvium. Infrastructure development may reveal salt-making sites. During the construction of the Addlethorpe Bypass, over 1000 pieces of briquetage - ceramic salt-making waste - were found in roadside ditches, indicating that salt-making took place here.
Muldefang
Muldefang. Click to expand.
By the Medieval period (AD 1066 - 1539), salt-making had switched from using saltwater as the source of salt, to using sands from the high spring tide, known locally as muldefang. Rich with salt, these sands produced a much stronger concentration of salt. This change in method required salt-making to be located on the coast and as such the sites of the Medieval salterns reflect the contemporary coastline in Lincolnshire. Though today these salterns are situated further inland than the present coastline, in Medieval times the shore would have been much closer to the salterns.
Landscape Changes
Landscape Changes. Click to expand.
This new process of salt-making also contributed to land accretion. While the sand was rich in salt, it also had to be filtered before it could be used for salt-making. The sand would be ‘washed’ in large filtration tanks, lined with peat, which gave the method its name, sandwashing. Through this process of filtration, sediment would sink to the bottom of the tanks. This sediment would then have to be disposed of, and was deposited in huge mounds along the coast. As the mounds grew, the salt-makers would move further east towards the coast. The previous saltern sites would then be taken over as prime pasture within just a few years, the high elevation enabling settlement in what was previously an intertidal zone.
A Declining Industry
A Declining Industry. Click to expand.
The production of salt in Lincolnshire continued into the 1600s, with the number of filtration tanks at sites such as Wainfleet St Mary suggesting a huge industrial process. However, this was an industry in decline. Competition came both from inland, through saltwater springs as in Cheshire, and overseas production of salt through solar evaporation. The decline in salt-making can be seen in the comparative size of the mounds at Wainfleet St Mary, as opposed to those from Marshchapel, which were formed at the peak of salt production.
Early Discoveries
Some of the earliest finds related to Lincolnshire salt-making have been made along the coast. On Ingoldmells Beach, as early as the 19th century local historians and antiquarians were making discoveries of ‘hand-bricks’ - misshapen lumps of clay revealed by the low tides. These hand-bricks are often little more than a piece of clay squeezed within the hand and can date back as far as the Late Bronze Age, 3000 years ago. They show the imprints of palms, fingers, and thumbs. Most of these impressions are small, perhaps suggesting that they were made by a woman or child. The hand-bricks are probably supports, used to raise containers holding saltwater over a fire to facilitate evaporation.
Iron Age and Roman Salt Production
Producing salt from brine essentially relies on the process of evaporation: the brine is heated until the water evaporates and only the salt remains. While on the continent the heat of the sun was strong enough to achieve this, in Lincolnshire it was necessary to burn fuel, such as peat, to fully evaporate the water.
Early salterns would have consisted of containers raised over a simple hearth, directly heating the container and the water within. By the late Iron Age (100 BC - AD 42), indirect systems of heating were common, such as that pictured here. These oven-type structures would have indirectly heated the water by channelling the heat from the fire via a system of flues.
The number of sites discovered in the region suggest an intensive salt-making industry along the Lincolnshire coast. The Roman geographer Ptolemy refers to a location known as ‘Salinae’, which has been identified with this area of the coast. It is likely that this extended into the lost area of coast known as ‘Old Skegness’, suggesting that a large number of salterns may be buried under the sea.
Briquetage
The discovery of sites along the coast is often accidental. Salt-making sites usually leave little evidence in the landscape, having been covered by layers of silt and alluvium. Infrastructure development may reveal salt-making sites. During the construction of the Addlethorpe Bypass, over 1000 pieces of briquetage - ceramic salt-making waste - were found in roadside ditches, indicating that salt-making took place here.
Muldefang
By the Medieval period (AD 1066 - 1539), salt-making had switched from using saltwater as the source of salt, to using sands from the high spring tide, known locally as muldefang. Rich with salt, these sands produced a much stronger concentration of salt. This change in method required salt-making to be located on the coast and as such the sites of the Medieval salterns reflect the contemporary coastline in Lincolnshire. Though today these salterns are situated further inland than the present coastline, in Medieval times the shore would have been much closer to the salterns.
Landscape Changes
This new process of salt-making also contributed to land accretion. While the sand was rich in salt, it also had to be filtered before it could be used for salt-making. The sand would be ‘washed’ in large filtration tanks, lined with peat, which gave the method its name, sandwashing. Through this process of filtration, sediment would sink to the bottom of the tanks. This sediment would then have to be disposed of, and was deposited in huge mounds along the coast. As the mounds grew, the salt-makers would move further east towards the coast. The previous saltern sites would then be taken over as prime pasture within just a few years, the high elevation enabling settlement in what was previously an intertidal zone.
A Declining Industry
The production of salt in Lincolnshire continued into the 1600s, with the number of filtration tanks at sites such as Wainfleet St Mary suggesting a huge industrial process. However, this was an industry in decline. Competition came both from inland, through saltwater springs as in Cheshire, and overseas production of salt through solar evaporation. The decline in salt-making can be seen in the comparative size of the mounds at Wainfleet St Mary, as opposed to those from Marshchapel, which were formed at the peak of salt production.
Sources
Fenwick, H. (2001) 'Medieval salt-production and landscape development in the Lincolnshire Marsh' in Ellis, S., Fenwick, H., Lillie, M and Van de Noort, R., (eds) Wetland Heritage of the Lincolnshire Marsh, pp.231-241. Hull: Humber Wetlands Project, Hull University.
Lane, T. W. (2018) Mineral from the Marshes, Coastal Salt-Making in Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire Archaeology and Heritage Reports Series 12.
Lane, T. W. and Morris, E. L. (eds.) (2001) A Millennium of Saltmaking: Prehistoric and Romano-British Salt Production in the Fenland. Lincolnshire Archaeology and Heritage Reports Series 4.
Morris, E.L., (2007), ‘Making Magic: Later Prehistoric and Early Roman Salt Production in the Lincolnshire Fenland’, in Haselgrove, C and Moore, T. (eds), The Later Iron Age in Britain and Beyond, pp.430-443. Oxford: Oxbow.
Simmons, I.G. (n.d.) Margins of the East Fen: Historic Landscape Evolution. Available at: https://www.dur.ac.uk/east-lincs-history/. [Accessed 27/08/2021.]
Main Map
Use the link below to return to the main map page.
Fen
Use the link below to explore the history of salt-making in the fenland region.
About the Project
Salt on the Screen is a University of York Digital Creativity Lab Summer School 2021 project. The project seeks to use interactive digital media to explain and explore historic Lincolnshire salt making. Salt on the Screen was been developed by environmental scientist Dr Katherine Selby (project lead), design researcher Dr Debbie Maxwell (project co-lead); and HCI researcher Alexandra Leigh (project researcher). You can contact the research team and find out more about the project here .
Salt on the Screen was created with the support of
- Tom Lane
- Dave Bromwich & The Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust
- Tish Cookson & the Dynamic Dunescapes Project
- CITiZAN