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Prestonpans and Vicinity

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shaking screens with various sizes of perforations. The coal is hand picked on five travelling tables with lowering ends to prevent or reduce breakage at the waggons. The dross is carried from all the screens by a scraper conveyor to the elevator pit, from whence it is raised by an elevator capable of raising 50 tons per hour. It is then divided into six sizes by a revolving riddle composed of perforated steel plates, the perforations being kept open by means of a blower. Five sizes of dross are washed in " bash " tanks and delivered into hoppers, the unwashed "gum" being conveyed to the boiler dross-hole by a scraper conveyor. Provision is also made for loading large and small coal into carts by means of three coal screens and four hoppers for washed dross.
BRICKWORKS.
Composition brick, fire brick, covers, blocks, pipes, traps, vent linings, chimney cans, and fancy ware are made from the blaes and fire-clay drawn from the colliery. These are all hand made, except the pipes and vent linings which are made by a Titley pipe machine having a cylinder 42 inches in diameter. The green ware is all steam dried and burnt in circular arid Newcastle kilns.
HARBOUR.
At the harbour provision is made for loading and disloading vessels either afloat or on the ground. One of the berths is furnished with a movable shoot so that steamers may be loaded and bunkered without being shifted. The capacity of this shoot is about 90 tons per hour.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING.
All the surface plant, the brickwork, office, and harbour are lighted by electricity. The installation consists of a Silvertown dynamo with an output of 370 amperes at 60 volts at 460 revolutions per minute. There are 10 arc lamps and 160 incandescent lamps. This plant is driven by a 13-inch cylinder engine with a 3-feet stroke running at the rate of 60 revolutions per minute.
WORKMEN'S HOUSES.
There are about 250 workmen's houses connected with the colliery, another block of thirty-two newly erected, and more in course of construction. These recently built are two-storied, two-roomed houses of brick.

CHAPTER III.
SALT MAKING.
Salt Making, 1189—King David's Grant—Increase of Salt Works— Complete Description of Salt Making in the Early Centuries—Salt Smuggling—The Bludewife—Bamboozling the Ganger—Sandy Hewit, the Cockenzie Salt Smuggler, and how he did it—Repeal of the Salt Duty— Price of Salt—From an Edinburgh Source.
THE manufacture of salt, like the digging of coal, began at a very early period in this locality. We have already referred to charters emanating from De Quincy of Winton and Tranent, wherein he granted the monks of Newbattle a footing at Preston in 1184, where they formed a home and did not delay to set their house in order, for soon we find them not only with their sheep in the meadows and their hands at the plough, but, so early as the year 1198, we find this same religious order busily engaged in the art of making salt.
At what period the monks of Newbattle ceased from their labours as manufacturers of salt at Prieststown would now be difficult to determine. Very likely it would be during Reformation times. No doubt the salters would take unto themselves wives from among the fisher folks, and perhaps we have a direct line of continuance down through all these years to our no less worthy labourers at the salt pans of the present day.
That it has, however, been a never ceasing branch of industry in the village since that early date may readily be taken for granted. Some two centuries later we have information to the effect that there were no less than ten salt works belonging to the town, and that they were capable of producing between 800 and 900 bushels of salt per week.
In an old MS. we find a curious fragment under the heading " Prestonpans. " It says, " King David I., among other places, granted them two salt pans Out in the Forth, but, " continues the writer, " whether these were here or elsewhere
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