Field Visit

Date 1979

Event ID 882449

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/882449

Coal was discovered and wrought at this remote site on the NE coast of Arran in the early 18th century, and salt was manufactured here intermittently between 1710 and 1735 (Whatley 1982). Some of the workmen were imported from Bo’ness on the River Forth, where the Hamilton family, co-owners of Arran, possessed major coal and salt undertakings. Coal was again temporarily worked at the Cock of Arran in the 1770s, and although the possibility of reopening the salt pan was considered, there is no evidence of any manufacture of salt in that period. The site has thus lain comparatively undeveloped, and the roofless and ruinous buildings here probably constitute the earliest and most complete surviving remains of a Scottish salt-work. It is probably a typical small-scale version of the numerous contemporary establishments around the River Forth, the principal centre of the marine salt industry in Scotland.

The semicircular-ended building (A) is the pan-house or boiling-house which occupies a shore-side position for a convenient regular supply of sea-water. The interior of the building measures 26ft 3in (8.00m) by 23ft (7.01m) and retains the vaulted furnace-area and stone piers on which the pan was mounted. According to contemporary accounts, a Scottish pan was usually made of iron plates and measured 18ft (5.49m) in length by 9ft (2.74m) in width and 1dt 6in (0.46m) in depth (Smout 1978, 41; St Fond cited Duckham 1970, 318). The furnace was stoked and emptied in the adjacent fore-house (B) which, on the upper floor, may also have had a bothy for the salters. The near bicameral building (C) is a storehouse or girnal known to have been built in 1712, and the two ranges marked (D) appear to be the remains of workers’, probably colliers’, dwellings. Sunken areas (E) and (F) represent the flooded mouths of some of the coal-pits, and it has been plausibly suggested that building (G) may have accommodated salt Excise officers (Whatley 1982, 97).

RCAHMS 1986, 163-4 (Visited 1979)