Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- St Pancras Priory, Lewes: its Architectural Development to 1200
- Wace and Warfare
- John Leland and the Anglo-Norman Historian
- The Growth of Castle Studies in England and on the Continent since 1850
- The Logistics of Fortified Bridge Building on the Seine under Charles the Bald
- Charles the Bald's Fortified Bridge at Pitres (Seine): Recent Archaeological Investigations
- The Struggle for Benefices in Twelfth-Century East Anglia
- Coastal Salt Production in Norman England
- The Welsh Alliances of Earl Ælfgar of Mercia and his Family in the mid-Eleventh Century
- Domesday Slavery
- Hydrographic and Ship-Hydrodynamic Aspects of the Norman Invasion, AD 1066
- Monks in the World: the Case of Gundulf of Rochester
- Royal Service and Reward: the Clare Family and the Crown, 1066-1154
- A Vice-Comital Family in Pre-Conquest Warwickshire
Coastal Salt Production in Norman England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- St Pancras Priory, Lewes: its Architectural Development to 1200
- Wace and Warfare
- John Leland and the Anglo-Norman Historian
- The Growth of Castle Studies in England and on the Continent since 1850
- The Logistics of Fortified Bridge Building on the Seine under Charles the Bald
- Charles the Bald's Fortified Bridge at Pitres (Seine): Recent Archaeological Investigations
- The Struggle for Benefices in Twelfth-Century East Anglia
- Coastal Salt Production in Norman England
- The Welsh Alliances of Earl Ælfgar of Mercia and his Family in the mid-Eleventh Century
- Domesday Slavery
- Hydrographic and Ship-Hydrodynamic Aspects of the Norman Invasion, AD 1066
- Monks in the World: the Case of Gundulf of Rochester
- Royal Service and Reward: the Clare Family and the Crown, 1066-1154
- A Vice-Comital Family in Pre-Conquest Warwickshire
Summary
Even with the omission of any discussion of the eleventh-century inland salt-production centres of Worcestershire and Cheshire, a review of coastal production in the Norman period is a considerable exercise. It may be thought unnecessary: adequate summaries would appear to exist, notably in the three regional volumes of The Domesday Geography and in Professor Darby’s Domesday England. However, salt production may be understood more satisfactorily by using a broader chronological perspective and considering in more detail the uses to which salt was put. Within the constraints imposed on the Domesday Geography, the evidence for salt-working assembled in those volumes is confined almost entirely to an analysis of numbers of salinæ, and their renders, accompanied by distribution maps showing the numbers of salinæ recorded. Darby, in his concluding remarks for the volume on Eastern England, states
there is also clear evidence that some of the villages certainly had pans in the later Middle Ages, but we can only conjecture whether they were also there in the eleventh century. The other limitation from which the Domesday evidence suffers is that it tells us nothing about the way in which salt was made, nor does it give any hint of the customs associated with the industry. The concluding sentence of this section may well serve as the concluding sentence of the volume as a whole. In giving us something, the Domesday Book has withheld much.
In this review an attempt will be made to expand the evidence published so far and provide what information there may be for the details omitted from the Domesday Book.
It is necessary, first of all, to establish to what uses salt was put in the mediaeval period. In Ælfric’s Colloquy the importance of salt is neatly summarised and refers to salt as flavouring food and that, without it, butter and cheese would perish. One may assume that butter- and cheese-making techniques change little: Bridbury records that on one of the bishop of Winchester’s estates in 1305 one pound of salt was needed for the production of every ten pounds of butter or cheese.
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- Anglo-Norman Studies XIProceedings of the Battle Conference 1988, pp. 133 - 180Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 1989