Salt Pans in the Rhins of Galloway

On the coast a couple of miles north of the village of Port Logan and a mile noth-west of Logan House, reached by a country lane and through a yard busy with domesticated ducks and geese, is a little bay named Port Gill. It is an unattractive place for the casual tourist, being marshy and rocky and rather rubbish-strewn. It does, however, contain some intriguing stone-built ruins. Running north-south across the bay is a rubble-built pier, its southern end now demolished by the action of the sea. On the southern side of the bay is a roofless single-storey rectangular building and a stone-walled enclosure. Close inspection reveals the remains of two other buildings. A network of paths links the buildings and the pier.

Port Gill, showing the remains of the pier on the right of the picture and remains of buildings and an enclosure on the left.

Port Gill pier, buildings and enclosure as depicted on the late 19th century 25 inch to 1 mile ordnance survey map. Note that at that time two of the buildings still had roofs, while the middle building was unroofed. Note also the well from which the inhabitants would have drawn their water.

What were these structures for and when were they built? Documentary sources offer no definitive answers. The pier, buildings and enclosures are marked on 19^th century ordnance survey maps but their function is not noted. The Old and New Statistical Accounts of Kirkmaiden parish do not mention Port Gill. Early 19^th century valuation rolls and  census returns are similarly uninformative; the land was owned by the Laird of Logan but the only inhabitants were agricultural labourers. Modern sources are no more helpful. The pier is listed in Historic Environment Scotland’s Canmore database, but with no description or dates. Finally, the otherwise excellent local history books about the South Rhins make no mention of Port Gill or its ruins.

For a clue as to Port Gill’s possible history, we must go back to William Roy’s highly detailed Military Map of the Lowlands of Scotland, compiled between 1747 and 1755. This does not depict the pier, but does show buildings and an enclosure in roughly the same position as the modern ruins. The whole area is labelled, “Saltpans of Bay Gill”.

So was Port Gill the site of an 18^th century salt works? In this article I will look at the salt manufacturing industry in early modern Scotland and specifically at the evidence for salt works in the Rhins of Galloway. In doing so, I will attempt to solve the mystery of the Port Gill ruins.

The Scottish Salt Manufacturing Industry

Salt had been manufactured from sea water in Scotland since at least medieval times. In the 16^th and early 17^th centuries, salt was a major export commodity for Scotland, but foreign competition led to a concentration on the domestic market. Scottish salt was used for meat preservation, bacon and ham curing and cheese making, as well as a cooking and table condiment. Interestingly, it was never much used for fish curing, as its means of production affected the flavour of fish.

Salt played a significant role in the Act of Union that united England and Scotland in 1707. Scottish saltmasters, who were predominantly leading landowners, successfully argued that the Scottish salt industry would be ruined by free trade, as the market would be swamped by cheaper and better quality English salt, which mainly came from inland brine springs rather than the sea. A prohibitive tariff was placed on English salt, while Scottish salt was virtually untaxed. This fiscal advantage meant that Scottish manufacturers had a virtual monopoly of the domestic market (though salt for fish curing had to be imported from continental sources such as Portugal and English salt could be smuggled in).

As Scottish salt was produced by boiling seawater, saltworks, known as ‘Salt Pans’, after the large rectangular iron pans in which the water was boiled, were sited on the coast and near to sources of fuel. The main concentrations of salt pans were on the Firths of Forth and Tay and on the Ayrshire coast, all of which had extensive coal deposits. Indeed, saltworks and collieries often had the same owners, as the salt pans could use small pieces of coal (known as pancoal) that were not otherwise saleable. At the same time, small-scale saltworks could be set up anywhere along the coast, even in such isolated parts of the country as the Rhins of Galloway, using wood or peat as fuel and serving local markets.

In 1825, the tax relief on Scottish salt was abolished as part of broader moves towards the promotion of free trade. As the saltmasters had predicted, this rapidly led to the decline of the industry in Scotland as English salt rushed onto the market. Although some saltworks struggled on for a few years, by the end of the 19^th century salt pans in Scotland were a thing of the past.

How Salt Pans Worked

In 1748, William Brownrigg published a treatise entitled The Art of Making Common Salt, in which he described in detail the various processes by which salt could be manufactured. At the time, salt made from seawater was known as “white salt” and from Brownrigg’s treatise we could reconstruct an 18^th century white salt works. The “saltern” was a long rectangular stone-built building, sometimes divided into two parts. One part of the building would be a store (and sometimes accommodation for the salters), while the other contained one or two salt pans. As previously mentioned, these were shallow, flat-bottomed, rectangular iron vats, around 15 feet long, 12 feet wide and 15 inches deep, raised up from the ground on iron supports called “taplins”. Underneath the pan was a brick furnace, sealed in to ensure that smoke did not taint the salt. Smoke from the furnace exited via a chimney, and the steam from the boiling water was let out through wooden slats in the roof.

Seawater was collected in a pond near the shoreline and stored in a cistern, to allow impurities to settle. When needed, water was directed into the pans along a pipe or channel. Animal blood was added to the pan. This contained albumin, which extracted remaining impurities from the water, causing them to rise to the surface as a scum that could be skimmed off. The water was boiled until salt crystals started to appear (which took around five hours) and then more seawater was added and the boiling process continued. After four loads of water had been boiled off (which took around 24 hours), the salt could be shovelled out of the pan, dried and packed.

As Scottish seawater contains around 3% salt, 30 tons of water were needed to produce one ton of salt. Adverse weather could affect salt production; in particular, heavy rain could dilute the salinity of seawater to such an extent that it was not possible to economically extract salt from it. Consequently, salt manufacture tended to be a seasonal activity.

Salters and Saltmasters

Salt making wasn’t a labour-intensive business and a small salt works would have employed only a handful of people. In 18^th century Scotland, salters, like colliers, were bonded to their employers, meaning that they could not leave to work for anyone else. On the face of it, this seems like a form of serfdom, but Christopher Whatley points out that salters were relatively well paid and saltmasters had as much obligation to their salters as vice versa. As salt pans tended to be in isolated areas and salt-making was a round-the-clock activity, salters were provided with accommodation. As mentioned above, this could sometimes be in the same building as the salt pan itself – at least it was warm! Sometimes salters were also given some land for their own cultivation. A salter’s employer was often the local Laird, supplementing the estate income or providing himself with a ready supply of salt to prepare the meat from his farms for market.

Salt Pans in the Rhins of Galloway

Salt manufacture was never a widespread industry in Galloway, however there is evidence of saltworks in the Rhins in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. This evidence, in both documentary and archaeological terms is however sparse and partial and it is not possible to be sure exactly when or for how long any of the identified saltpans were operational. Ian Donnachie, in his Industrial Archaeology of Galloway, identifies five sites in the Rhins, marked on the map below.

Salt pan sites in the Rhins of Galloway (from Donnachie, 1971)

Salt Pan Bay, Aires, Kirkcolm Parish

Donnachie states that this site operated some time in the 18^th century, but all that remains today is the name by which the area is labelled on ordnance survey maps. It is an unprepossessing part of the coast, associated with the small, then independently owned estate of Aires, centred around Mains of Aires farmhouse in the west of Kirkcolm parish. There is nothing to see at the site on 19^th century ordnance survey maps or on modern aerial photographs. The use of the singular (Salt Pan) suggests that it was a very small scale operation. It is not mentioned on any 18^th century maps and therefore probably did not function for very long.

Salt Pans Bay, Galdenoch, Leswalt Parish

Although it isn’t saying much, this is both the best documented of the Rhins sites and the best preserved archaeologically. It was associated originally with Galdenoch castle, a forbidding 16^th century tower house sited a mile or so inland. Donnachie tells us that around 1640, Uchtred Agnew, Laird of Galdenoch, made a contract with Alexander Osborne to establish a saltworks, while the Laird gave Osborne an acre of land and liberty to cut peats for the furnace. The works were still functioning in 1791, consisting of “two dwelling houses and the salt pan” and a “pann house and large hole digged in the rock”. It lasted until the early 19^th century, producing “very excellent salt from sea-water”.

Galdenoch Castle, where Uchtred Agnew contracted Alexander Osborne to establish a saltworks in 1640.

The site is described, along with an outline plan, in the Canmore database. There are the remains of two rectangular buildings and another severely robbed structure nearer to the shoreline, along with two walled enclosures (one of which probably contained cultivation rigs) and a kiln. The larger building may have been the saltern, or pan house and may have been divided into two compartments, as Brownrigg described. The smaller building may have been a salter’s house. The enclosures and kiln suggest that the salters were growing crops on the land adjacent to the salt works. There may also have been a landing point, to facilitate transporting the salt by sea.

The ruins at Salt Pans Bay, Galdenoch. In the middle of the picture is a walled enclosure that apparently contains cultivation rigs. Beyond the enclosure are the remains of two adjacent buildings. The larger building to the left may have contained the salt pans.

 Salt Pans, Ardwell, Stoneykirk Parish

This site, in a bay north of Ardwell Bay and associated with Ardwell House, is named on the mid-19^th century first edition ordnance survey map, which depicts two small buildings placed next to each other with related enclosures, though the site was not by then active. Henry Blain, author of The Old Statistical Account of Stoneykirk, wrote in 1792 that salt had been manufactured in the parish “some years ago” but laconically added, “but the practice is now discontinued, probably, because it was found easier to smuggle that article from Ireland”. There is now no evidence of salt pans at the site, which is occupied by a private house.

Salt Pans, Chapel Rossan, Stoneykirk Parish

This may be the second site for salt manufacture that Blain stated had existed in Stoneykirk parish. It is the only site on the Eastern shore of the Rhins. Its only depiction is on John Ainslie’s 1782 map of the county of Wigton, suggesting that it had a short lifespan.

Salt Pans of Bay Gill, Kirkmaiden Parish???

So we return to our starting point, the ruins on the shore of Port Gill. Are these the “Salt Pans of Bay Gill” noted by William Roy? Well, Donnachie tells us that there were indeed salt pans associated with Logan House. Logan salt pan was mentioned in Andrew Symson’s 1684 A Large Description of Galloway as making good salt with peats instead of coals and in 1688 James Mitchell was given liberty to cut peats from Logan Moss, “of qwich moss one horse is able to keep the pan daily going”. Donnachie does not say where Logan salt pan was sited, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that it was situated at Port Gill. There is the mention on Roy’s map. The ruins closely resemble those at Galdenoch and other rural salt works elsewhere in Scotland. More tellingly, Logan Moss, where James Mitchell cut his peats, an area of marshland north of Logan House (now mainly plantation) is less than a mile east of Port Gill and is connected to it by a road, depicted on the first edition ordnance survey map.

A closer view of the ruins at Port Gill. In the foreground is a building with two compartments (note that it has been repaired at some time). Behind it is a walled enclosure. On the right hand side of the enclosure can be seen the remains of a second building. The scant remains of the third building are in the middle of the picture.

So I would suggest that the Port Gill ruins are most likely the remains of Logan salt pans. The pier is still a bit mysterious, as other saltworks do not have a dedicated pier (though Galdenoch salt pans may have had a landing stage) and there was a harbour at nearby Port Nessock (now Port Logan). However, the original 17^th century pier at Port Nessock was in ruins by the late 18^th century and the present harbour was not built until 1825. It may be that an 18^th century Laird of Logan felt that a small pier at Port Gill would assist the export of salt (and perhaps cured meat) from his estate and would be less exposed to storms than Port Nessock.

The remains of the pier that once stretched out over the bay.

Conclusion

Archaeological excavation of the ruins at Port Gill may confirm that they are indeed the remains of Logan salt pans, but that is unlikely to happen any time soon. The salt industry in the Rhins was small scale, seasonal and Galdenoch excepted, probably didn’t last long. Writing about Galloway, Donnachie concluded that “as an industry, and perhaps more as a rural craft, [salt manufacture] has left little to interest the industrial archaeologist, with the exception of rock-cut salt pans at the cliff-foot on lonely Galdenoch shore”. Well, if my theory about Port Gill is correct, I may at a stroke have doubled the number of remaining salt pan sites in the Rhins of Galloway!


Sources Used
 Canmore: the online catalogue to Scotland's archaeology, buildings, industrial and maritime heritage
Census returns and valuation rolls available at Scotland’s People

Old and New Statistical Accounts of Wigtonshire Parishes.

Roy Military Survey, John Ainslie's map of the county of Wigton and 19^th Century Ordnance Survey maps available from the National Library of Scotland Map Images 
Brownrigg W (1748)  The Art of Making Common Salt
 Donnachie I (1971) Industrial Archaeology of Galloway. Newton Abbott: David & Charles
Whatley C. A. (1987). The Scottish Salt Industry: An Economic and Social History 1570-1850. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press