Old Salt Pans

The St Monans Salt Pans are a mysterious, yet so interesting part of the village's history. As mentioned in our Windmill tour, the Salt Industry was paramount to the income of St Monans, and in the period running up to The Industrial Revolution, the village relied on Salt and Fishing to keep afloat. Now in a ruinous state, the 9 Salt Pans of St Monans are a small fragment of a once enormous industrial feat.

Interestingly enough, only 1 of 9 Salt Pans were actually excavated, leaving us merely guessing what lies beneath the ground, in terms of the other 8 Pans. Thankfully, with archaeology, community spirit, and the East Neuk Salt Company on our side, we've learned more about the Pans than ever! After the Salt Industry ceased to exist in St Monans, with the coming of the Industrial Revolution, people flocked to catch and sell fish, while the Saltworks of St Monans gathered dust, and stayed that way for hundreds of years, until the East Neuk Preservation Society helped the area to become a tourism point. Now, as we enter the 2020's, the Salt Industry in the village could rise again.

The East Neuk Salt Company, founded by Darren Peattie, came to life with a vision, and that vision was to regenerate the salt industry in the local area. With a positive outlook on organic seasalt from the Forth, the East Neuk Salt Company has already started to drum up business in many different places, and continues to strive for the inclusion of the trade in the village.

After a series of well-executed promotional videos by the company, and some well-recieved community action, the village took to the ideas that the East Neuk Salt Company treasures so well, and now, a plan is in place to hopefully see the restoration of one of the village's nine Salt Pans, making way for a historical centre regarding the industry. This will not only bring village heritage back to life, but will also allow for more tourism, and profit in the village.

Working for hours on end to keep the pans boiling for such a small crop, Salt Workers had a hard time. Luckily, for them, the Firth of Forth posed as an endless supply of salt water, no matter the laborious task that lay ahead, and for this reason, the village profited, highly.

Despite this, there were more dangers than benefits when it came to working in a Salt Pan. Firstly, the danger of being scalded 'beyond repair' by the hot iron furnace, that may well have heated the Salt Water to hundreds of degrees higher than your average kettle, was very much imminent. One wrong step, and you could also risk being boiled alive. A solution containing a salt can boil at a temperature as high as 1500°c, so the chances of survival in cases as such were low. To put that into perspective, water boils at 100°c, and can give nasty enough burns at that temperature alone. For these reasons, people counted their blessings as they worked in the Pans. Of course, in times like those, Health and Safety was not always prioritised, yet, few accidents ever occured in the Pans, thankfully enough.

St Monans was not alone in this 'epiphany' of utilising our surroundings for profit. In fact, some towns and city suburbs were even built around the trade. Take the East Lothian town of 'Prestonpans', for an example, or the 'Joppa Pans' area of coastal Edinburgh.

The source of fuel for the St Monans Salt Pans came from Coal Mines, in the form of Lumped Coal. Fife, and Scotland's Central Belt were very much a part of the Coal Mining Industry, but St Monans profited more from Fishing, and Salt Production. Neighbouring towns, like Dysart, and the Wemyss Villages, were more involved with the collection of coal. The coal used to power the Pans was pulled on a cart, usually by a child worker, along a wagonway. The route of said wagonway can still be seen today, roughly tracing the path in which the Fife Coastal Path follows.