Salt Pans

Bander pans: these salt pans appeared in the early nineteenth century when a furnance or bander was added to make them more efficient.
To Beit the pans: to mend, to restore to the original state.
Bittern: the small residium of salts which are left in the pans after the salt was removed.
Bucket pots: a storage place for sea water. Usually found on rocky sites, they differed from the sumps, in that they required construction, and reservoirs, which were associated with alluvial sites.
Carse: low alluvial land along a river.
Coal-heugh: the shaft of a coal pit.
Creech: the unwanted chemicals which are removed from the pan before the salt is drawn.
Creech cogs: shallow square iron vessels used in removing the creech.
Drawing the pan: the removal of the salt at the end of the boiling.
Girnel: a store house for holding salt. Up to 1825 they were the same as bonded warehouses and came under the Key of the Customs and Excise.
Goat: a narrow inlet into which the sea enters.
Liquor: the general name of the boiling brine solution in the pans.
Pandora or Pandoor: a large oyster caught at the doors of the pans.
Panwood: small pieces of coal found around the Firth o' Forth.
Reservoir: larger than bucket pots they were constructed to hold a weeks supply, of sea water. Usually found in alluvial sites.
Rock Salt: there are no deposits of rock salt in Scotland. Supplies were obtained from Cheshire, Carrickfergus, Stockton-upon-Tees and Germany.
Salt master: the owner of the pans.
Scotch salt: this is a trade name given to the larger angular cyrstals that were the product of Scottish Salt Pans.
Sole pans: pans fired from the ground.
Sump: a hollow cut in the rocks on the foreshore to collect water at high tide.
Sunday Salt: large tabular flakes of salt which formed when the pans were left to cool on Sunday under Scots Law, there was no work on Sundays.
To thirl: to bind or subject a person to a life of serfdom.

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Cover - Preface - Contents- Glossary - Acknowledgements - Photographs & Illustrations