Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14660

    Salt works

    Date
    ca. 1694
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p22
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 314mm
    width (page): 202mm
    Subject
    Description
    Layout of a salt work plant from a letter to Hans Sloane. This design of a salt processing plant with a feeding pond is described as something that would be 'a very profitable design for Ireland if near a Colepitt or woods for a very great deal is consumed in boiling', noting that well-cured beef using salt made in this way kept for 22 months in the West Indies.

    This figure is copied in LBC/11ii/025.
    Transcription
    ... there must bee 4 acres of Land to every boyling pan, which must be converted into feeding ponds, small square pans, & sun-pans, the feeding ponds are, to receive water from the sea, for flowing the other worke, the small square pans are to prepare this sea=water, and the sun-pans to receive this prepared water, and there 'tis made into brine, which is don[e] by the heat of the sun & wind & that according to the suns heat & wind that Liquor is made brine in 3 or 4 days from the sae, which being managed by a good workman he will know what strength the Liquor is of to work to advantages. Note that their [sic] must be a convenient sluce placed in the lowest part of this ground through the sea-bank to carry of the waste water, raines, & springs, and another sluce laid in at another place of the sea bank convenient for letting of the sea-water into your feeding ponds as occasion shall require.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Related fellows
    Hans Sloane (1660 - 1753, Irish) , Physician
    Associated place
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