salt

Latin, sal.

Salt was a necessity of life and the salt industry is the most fully recorded industry in Domesday Book. In Cheshire, several wiches - salt-works - are named; and the word occurs elsewhere in some place-names, notably Droitwich in Worcestershire, a major centre. Large numbers of brine-pits (Latin, putei) and salt-houses - salt-pans - (Latin, salinae) are recorded elsewhere, notably around the south and east coasts. Devon and Dorset record significant numbers of salt-workers; but, like much else in Domesday, it is likely that this reveals more about the unsystematic of the data collection than of the distribution of the salt industry.

For further information on the salt industry, see H.C. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977); and Laurence Keen, 'Coastal salt production in Norman England', Anglo-Norman Studies, vol. 1 (1989), pages 133-79.