Ecosal Meeting at Bournemouth

Group photo of a visit to the Waterfront Museum, Poole to meet Clare Randall and look at the museum exhibits. Members of Ecosal visiting were myself, Renato Neves, Portugal; Belen Escobar, Spain;  Benoit Poitevin, France; and Mark Brisbane, Michael Fradley, Bournemouth University.
The team also met with Roger Herbert, ecologist at Bournemouth University who has been working on bio-diversity and habitat surveys of salines as part of the Ecosal research agenda.

Clare Randall, Renato Neves, Belen Escobar, Benoit Poitevin, Mark Brisbane, Michael Fradley

As well as holding business meetings about the development of the Ecosal network the group visited Brownsea Island, Poole Harbour, St Barbes Museum and Lymington salt marshes.

During my flight down to Bournemouth from Manchester the plane flew over salt marshes at the Solent end of the Beaulieu River in Hampshire, and on the return journey over the area known as Ashton and Neumans Flashes at Northwich, Cheshire where rock salt mines collapsed in the nineteenth century and were later infilled with lime waste to create present day habitats for wading birds and is the home of calcarious grassland loving species such as the Dingy Skipper not otherwise to be found in Cheshire.
The Lion Salt Works is in the village of Marston, middle right of the picture on the Trent and Mersey Canal, which can also be seen.

Beaulieu River, looking north. Salt marshes at the mouth of the river where it enters The Solent. 

Ashton and Neumans Flashes, Northwich, looking north west.

Salt Making at Newlyn Art Gallery

19 - 20 May, 2012    8pm to 8am

A&A Fielding will be leading a salt making demonstration at the Nelwyn Art Gallery over the night of 19 May as part of the Museum's Museums at Night project.   culture24 link

Cat Gibbard the Education Officer has been working with different groups looking at salt as a theme.

Work throughout the night with Amanda Lorens to create an animation of tales in a salt landscape. To sustain our audience and participants there will be a variety of fruits from the sea, from the edible to the aural available, including a series of salty tales, told throughout the night. The Studio Cafè Bar will be open from 5pm until 12midnight serving Margaritas and a range of tasty morsels.




There will also be information about the project to create a route of traditional salt making linking sites in Portugal, Spain, France and the UK.

Young people will be creating new work in the space during a two week programme exploring the science, mythology and importance of salt and the processes by which it is extracted from the sea.

Salt making at Anderby Creek, Lincs 25 March 2012

On Sunday, 25 March we spent the day making salt at Anderby Creek with Tom Lane and Katie Green of Archaeological Project Services. The event was organised by artsNK.

Not an ideal day, despite the high spring temperatures across the whole of the UK, our part of the Lincolnshire coast was blanketed in a thick sea mist. So we spent the whole day trying to keep warm, whilst inland people basked in temperatures of 23 degrees.

The soft sand was not the best ground to dig a trench, but we did manage to make some salt crystals by the mid afternoon. This was the first time we had used peat as a fuel. It did really well, giving a slow steady heat without flaring up and over heating the ceramic salt pans. We used two types of pan - one set based on a type found at Ingoldmells, near Skegness, that used hot air ducted underneath the pans, and  another pair of small pans with peat burning directly underneath them.

There was a good mix of specialist visitors who already new a bit about salt making and members of the public who found our demonstration by accident because they were visiting the beach with their dog or their children (or both). Youtube - Salt Making at Anderby Creek

Our next demonstration is at Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall over the night of 19-20 May, as part of their 'Museums at Night' event for 2012.

Display panels produced by Archaeological Project Services to describe evidence of salt making uncovered by their archaeological work at different sites.

Transforming a section of the beach into a salt making site.

Checking the salt and monitoring the temperature.

Salt made during the demonstration, which lasted from 10.30 to 16.00

The dismantled salt hearths with remains of the ceramic floors and pedestals that were used to support the salt pans. 

Two small salt pans (left) and eight 'Ingoldmells' type ceramic salt pans cleaned and ready to pack up and take home at the end of the Anderby Creek demonstration day.

Maldon and Brora TV features

The Maldon Sea Salt Company was featured in the BBC antiques programme 'Flog it
BBC iplayer FLOG IT Series 8 - includes Maldon Sea Salt Company

Also on BBC2 a snippet from a feature on the excavations of the salt works at Brora, Scotland.
Excavations at Brora.
Salt Pans at Brora web site

Salt Making Demonstrations in 2012

Just preparing three salt making demonstrations for this year.
Two in Lincolnshire with Tom Lane and the Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire and Archaeological Project Services. At Anderby Creek on Sunday, 25th March, 10am to 4pm to be organised by ArtsNK and Saltfleetby on Sunday, 22nd July at the Prussian Queen pub as part of the Lincolnshire Grazing Partnership Project.
The third salt making day will actually be a night time experience working with Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall during their Museums at Night project over the night of 19-20 May, 8pm to 8am.

Details to follow shortly.

The Cloud Bar is a site designated by the Cloud Appreciation Society as the first official cloud watching site in the UK.

British Pathe News - Report of Salt Making at Aveiro, Portugal

Whilst visiting Aveiro, Portugal for the Ecosal-Atlantis meeting in November we sailed down the canal from the town centre to the salt museum, and then through this bridge along the west side of the town. Click on the link to see what it looked like in 1935 when British Pathe News visited and recorded the salt making there.

British Pathe News link
Salt Making at Aveiro, Portugal. 1935

Creating an Ecosal Route in the UK

Report posted on Bournemouth University Ecosal web site pages.
Creating an Ecosal Route in the UK

Presentation at the Ecosal-Atlantis meeting held at Aveiro, Portugal on 15 November, 2011.
Presentation given to Ecosal meeting