DescriptionThe surviving remains of the sixteenth century Port Eynon Salt House represent salt-collecting reservoirs and a boiling house. There are three stone lined chambers, with walls approximately one metre thick with stone-flagged floors set into the beach at the foot of a low cliff. The southern chamber is the largest chamber and was a seawater tank fed by a channel from lower down the beach. It has a pumping chamber in its north-western angle.
In the original arrangement it is thought that water was pumped from the chambers, or tanks to a panhouse above, where it was evaporated in pans heated by a coal furnaces, the salt being stored in the building to the west. The works appear to have been demolished and the chambers filled in around 1650. The site was excavated and laid out for display in the late 1980s.
RCAHMW, 27 October 2011.