Behind the misty screen of the long past, much of the
"Saltland" of romance lies securely veiled; it has traditions that
link it with the twilight of time. Many centuries passed ere it emerged from
the chrysalis of obscurity into fame and had its long slumber invaded by the
clang of the shipyard hammer and the clamorous noise of pigtail seamen. In its
day of uninterrupted peace, the hamlet sought its scanty livelihood in the
production from the briny waters of that which invests it with an industrial
title stretching back to the time of Robert the Bruce. It bears in its name
"SALT-COATS" the trade-mark of its old-fashioned saline glory; and
the word "salter, reminiscent of the original toilers, lingers pleasantly
in it's records, albeit the fires of salt cauldrons have been long since
extinguished and the telescope chimneys of its picturesque "Pans"
have vanished into nothingness Tradition presents us with a picture of the
primitive cot-dweller conjuring the salt by no more mystic spell than the
boiling of water in old pots and pans and seeking fuel cropped to the surface
at the very waterside. In the vaporous fumes of the settles' pans the figure
of the primeval salter appears to us dimly, but imagination and the ancient
chronicler have given to the cottar and his "saut meg" as sure an
immortality as belongs of right to the benefactors of the human race and the
progenitors of an interesting people. Quaint, in truth, even in more recent
times, was the work of the salters as they called up from the waves the
precious element; then watched the bubbling brew as it seethed within the vat
and skimmed the frothy liquor of its evil contents, stirring and straining and
brewing and re-brewing until the water evaporated and the salty particles
dropped from the pans like snowflakes, the ever whitening product passing
through the purifying crucible whilst the malodorous residuum was cast into
the sea.
Dear must the material have been when it was hoarded up in the landlord's
"girnals" to be meted out in quantities and that only on payment of
the tribute of Loch Fyne herrings, whereby the humble villager acknowledged
his dependence and gave tithe to the local ruler. Mystical as the process
remained down to our own day, the villagers' spouse had early discovered a
source of profit (scanty as it must have been) and a means of literally making
"saut to her kail" by the simple domestic aid of a kitchen kettle.
Ever re-sourceful woman! There have remained for us impressions out of the dim
shadows of the long ago of the guidwife of the salter taking the salt in the
ample folds of her coats for sale to the neighbouring villages and towns,
trudge miles unless fortunate enough to possess a donkey, upon whose sometimes
not too docile shoulders the salt packs were imposed. Local history loves to
conjure the memory of the salters of Saltcoats taking their place under the
blue blanket of their incorporation on the field of Flooden; and there is a
legend, touching upon the stampede after the battle of Largs, which tells of
the good people of the district running with their saltpans and kettles before
the devouring flames of kirk and clachan fired by a band of pirates.
The always-glimmering beacon of church history illuminating
the town's otherwise half-obscured story. We are enabled to see, although
"As in a glass darkly," the village as it thrived under the benign
influence of the monks of old Kilwinning. We know that it was a dependency of
the Abbey and had its kirk and pastor long before the days of Alexander Third.
A crumbling stone in a neighbouring churchyard is said to have borne the
inscription, "Hew Fergus, curate of ye kirk at Chapel Brae, Sautcottes",
and the date 1272. An entire history is writ within these simple words, for
here we have indicated to us the site of the ancient chapel, the name of the
worthy curate and a date that links the town's church history with a century
before Bannockburn. No wonder that the aroma of ecclesiastical life pervades a
place that can point to a record of at least six hundred years and which has
one of its most ancient institutions founded in the devotion of its earlier
inhabitants. Saltcoats Annual Fair, one of the oldest in Scotland was
established in honour of "The Blessed Virgin Mother", as is
contained in the charter which the town proudly preserves, granted to the Earl
of Eglinton by the fifth James upon its erection into a burgh of barony. The
first Fair, tradition acquaints us, was opened with great dignity by the Abbot
of Kilwinning and his monks. To this hour the townspeople hold high festival
in May according to the charter. Saltcoats was still attached to the Abbey of
Kilwinning when its simple band of fishermen wooed the speckled salmon from
the water by the eastern shore and, through Lord Montgomerie, sent the scaly
provender to grace the Abbot's board. The salmon fishings of East Saltcoats
were in existence when the third Stuart James still sat on his throne. In the
days of Mary Queen of Scots a kindly noble reigned in romantic Kerelaw. This
was the Earl of Glencairn. He it was who, taking the moorland of the town,,
broke it into nine separate pieces, giving a part to each of nine fishermen,
with pasture for a cow and follower, between Rough Castle and the Scor Loch.
That was done upon certain conditions, amongst which were to transport twice a
year the Earl's goods and chattels to his residence near Port Glasgow in the
two best fishing boats in the village. The tenants were to pay "six and
eightpence" at Pentecost and the Feast of St Martins, yielding also a
barrel of herrings from Loch Fyne. The landlord was to give in return
"four pecks of great salt", with an empty cask of that measure,
"sometime betwixt the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Peter in
bonds". The settlement of the nine yards commences the practical history
of the town. Three hundred years ago, as the Burgh Records of the Clyde
capital disclosed, the "nine yarders" were busy sending their boats
up the river to the Broomielaw, Thus the contents of the salt girnals of
Saltcoats, thrown in four-peck casks upon the quayside and trundled over the
cobbles of the "Saut Market" Glesca", went to savour the
banquets of city magnates and to enrich the brose of more humble dwellers of
St Mungo. The Salty product, by and by, found a new and profitable
application. A farmer's wife saw the Irish dairymaids making cheese and
brought the secret of its production to Ayrshire. "Babbie Gilmour",
while she conferred everlasting fame on Dunlop, also opened up a special
opportunity for Saltcoats. Hitherto it had been best acquainted with
"great salt". An ingenious salter discovered the refining elements
in blood and lime; and the world ever afterwards, when it looked to Dunlop for
its cheese, remembered that the palatable richness of the Kebbuck owed
everything to the powdered dainty "wherewith it was salted". And so
the salt processes of Saltcoats became, more than ever they did before, secret
which no man dare divulge and upon which none but the authorised dare intrude
Just about the time Babbie Gilmour's discovery the
Restoration had been accomplished. There lived at Auchenharvie, in the days of
Charles the Second, a Robert Cunninghame, who held the honourable title of
physician to the king and afterwards received the prefix "Sir". The
royal physician became inspired with a generous regard for the prosperity of
Saltcoats and initiated works of public benefit. Under his benevolence the
town arose from its state of sleepy somnolence to a condition of throbbing
activity.
Perhaps Sir Robert's generosity led him into difficulties,
for his heirs were afterwards obliged to mortgage part of the town to the Earl
of Eglinton, who ultimately, however, leased the lands we now know as
"the Stevenston side of Saltcoats". From the old residence of
Dovecoathall, on the heights above Ardeer, the laird of Auchenharvie came to
stay on the border of Saltcoats at Seabank, where his successors have ever
since remained.
The coal drifts that lay under the little town were, of
course, its most valuable exports; and as exportation could not be
accomplished without a harbour, the laird of Auchenharvie was right in bowing
to the necessity. To build a harbour was a perilous as well as costly
enterprise and the people of Saltcoats owe him a debt of gratitude. The story
of the building of the harbour represents a sixteen years' long battle with
the sea. No wonder the money spent on its preservation crippled the resources
of the worthy laird. To-day its crumbling fabric suggests for the inhabitants
the possible fate of Yarmouth, where long since the people had to sell their
church ornaments and the steeple bells to raise money to keep the harbour
good. How often do we hear dark fore-bodings of what may happen when the
foundations totter; when the sea enfolds, as it has already partially done,
the yielding Braes and the story of the flood is repeated. How many times have
we been reminded that Saltcoats has borne share of great storms and big tides.
With a fortitude which seems almost Dutch like in resignation to the
capricious fortune that rules the waters the townspeople have, behind the sea
wall which guards their home, watched the sea's attacks for at least two
centuries. Often have they seen the tides come up into the heart of the
streets, those unlooked for inundations imparting a Venetian touch to the
Dockhead thoroughfare; men rowing up and down this unfortunate little street
to take old people through the windows lest they should be drowned.
The Harbour, begun in 1684 and completed in 1700, was built
upon a long reef which still bears the curious name of the Shott; and the
elongated arm of the works built in later days and known as the New Quay, rest
upon the "Shott End The quaint rocks or "perches" sentinel the
outer harbour; they bear the name of the "Nebbocks",and the end of
the "new" pier (now somewhat belying its name in its battered and
seamy bulk) breasts upon the inner Nebbock. The rocky bed of the harbour is
named The Hirst" and terminates in "the Rock of the Reid". From
this backwards across to the front of the old pierhead, stretch a row of
"Perches" still bearing the iron rings through which, when a ship
was going to sea, she was warped out to a barrel anchored to the south-west to
make sail there. These the native delights to call the "ring rock".
The barrel had a ring, through which a hawser from the ship's bows was passed.
There were no capstan. All was done blithely by hand; on shore going out and
coming in was a ceremonial in which every "man jack" on shore felt
he had a native-born right to participate. It was not until the closing days
of the Eighteenth Century-practically a hundred years behind the making of the
harbour proper that it was found necessary to form the outer arm of the
sea-wall.
Many pens have tried to bring back to us the charms of
these old shipping days, when the black diamonds that were the real riches of
Saltland were drifted off at the Irish coast; when, within the town's own
dockyards, ships were fitted out in the spring for the then long journey to
America and vessels from every clime came to cast their stores upon the now
neglected quay; when the wherries brought the noisy islander and his produce;
when, in short, the harbour was a place of work from morn to dusk to the
accompaniment of the musical song of the jolly Jack and the rattle of the
shipbuilder's mallet as he deftly turned his lengths of stout oak into
handsome brigs of such sturdy foundation as to resist what the old seafarers
term "the bumping of the ground swell". It is sometimes difficult
for us to realise that on those now lonely Braes there stood three busy yards,
with a working colony of little less than two hundred men; That tall masts and
masses of rigging obscured the expanse of water and rose high above the
diminutive aggregation of thatched buildings on the quayside; yet within the
last twenty-five years of the Eighteenth Century sixty-four vessels slid from
the slip. At times the harbour was filled with shipping, giving to the bay the
charming aspect of a lively fishing port on the coast of France, the wind
whistling through the cross-trees, the hulls dipping from their moorings and
the ocean breaking over the curious old stretch of rock outside the sea-wall
known as Coalruffie. Close by the shore the fires of three saltpans burned
brilliantly; the mines within the town gave forth from their prolific bosom
hundreds of tons of coal; and five hundred disciples of the loom made music
throughout the village as they turned out numberless ells of material, to be
spirited away to the markets of the commercial metropolis. The closing year of
the century saw a ropewalk outstretched along the eastern shore towards
Stevenston. The town brewed its own beer and, for a time; a brief and not too
prosperous time - distilled the more fiery spirit. Other distillations were in
process. Someone discovered that what remained in the saltpans after
evaporation contained elements more serviceable than deserved to be thrown
back into the sea.
For the first time in the first time in the history of
chemistry- for the first time, perhaps, anywhere - Epsom salts were drawn from
what had hitherto been regarded as the useless sediment. Common soot as an
ingredient came to have a value of its own. Sweeps brought their grimy
collections and the uninitiated wondered as they saw the shore littered with
burning soot-peats which reddened the sandy plain. The uncanny influence of
black precipitate, touched by the wands of chemistry magicians, was a thing to
create awe. Magnesia was also cleverly conjured from apparently unattractive
deposits and so widespread a mark arose for these curative specialties - then
the sole medical resource of the poor - that it was said, with truth, Epsom
Salts made at Saltcoats provided for the impaired digestions of half Europe.
Not far advanced was the new century, which began so
auspiciously for the town, when the prosperous clangor on shore and inland
began to abate. Within the first decade one of the ship-building yards was
closed; another ceased in five years and the third followed it in 1817. Mines
were begun and then abandoned; a depression struck the weaving trade of the
country. Other calamities followed in appalling succession. The shipyards saw
the end of their days of big building. The appearance of a steamboat in the
fourth decade of the century drove away the old wherry traffic between
Saltcoats and the island of Arran.
The visiting ships grew colder in their attentions and
began to pay their respects to other ports - ports which bristled with better
machinery and better facilities - just like human nature all the world over.
There was a more practical reason for the extinction of the shipping industry.
The Ironworks came to the neighbourhood and as they required all the coal,
none was left to ship.
