Chapter XXXVI: Section III

_Of the Saltworks formerly at and about Lynn—paucity of appropriate materials—apology_.

The vicinity of Lynn in the Saxon times, and long after, appears to have been remarkable for its numerous Saltworks. {239a} At Gaywood alone, in the Confessor’s time, there were no less than _thirty_ Salt pans, or pits. {239b} The Salt springs of Droitwich, Nantwich, Northwich, &c. were then, it seems, not so much attended to as to afford a supply to the distant parts of the kingdom. The people of these parts were therefore obliged to manufacture their own salt. To what extent the work was carried on, or what quantity was generally, or annually produced, cannot now be ascertained. Nor are we informed of the particular mode, or process adopted and pursued in carrying on this ancient manufactory. It was, probably, pretty simple and not very unlike that used in latter times in the salt-works of South-town, by Yarmouth, and at other places. By the great number of Salt-works then at Lynn, or in its neighbourhood, it seems probable, that a considerable part of the adjacent country, and the interior districts, were supplied from thence with that necessary article: which might easily, even at that early period, be conveyed thither, by means of the inland navigation, which always gave to Lynn the vast advantage of a free and easy intercourse with all those places, however distant, that are situated near the banks, or in the neighbourhood of its numerous rivers. The Salt manufactured here was made, it seems, from the sea water which the tides brought up to the town, and which must have been, of course, much less salt, and less fit for the purpose than the water found below in the roads, or at sea: it appears therefore rather odd, that those salt-works should be placed so far up the country, or so distant from the sea: and yet so it was; every village and hamlet, almost, had then its Salt-work, or the moiety of one. {240} Here it may be proper to observe, that, at the periods of which we have been speaking, salt was not an article of revenue, and must therefore have been a pretty cheap commodity compared to what it is now, when the duty laid upon it by government is said to be above ten times its prime, or original cost.

In attempting to give an account of the state of things at Lynn during the period which we are now contemplating, almost all our light must be borrowed from the general history of the kingdom in the mean while, as the paucity of materials, relating particularly to this town, leaves us, for the most part, no other clew for our guidance. The reader must not therefore be displeased with the method here generally pursued, in exhibiting the state or history of Lynn under its East-Anglian and Anglo-Saxon sovereigns.

CHAP. III.

Of the religious profession of the first Anglian inhabitants of Lynn—their renouncing heathenism, and assuming the christian name—account of their conversion, and character of their Christianity.