Once the salt was made in the Pan House 3/ 4, it was left to dry and then carried through to the
stove houses on open sided salt barrows by the lumpers.
The Stove House
The stove house was built of
brick. It was built directly behind the pan house.
On the ground floor level inside
it was filled with hard concrete material to the same height as the level of
the pan. This was known as the flue level.
Above this was an open roofed
warehouse level. This was built of either wood or steel and was open to the
roof trusses.
The flue level
The flue level was where the blocks
of salt were baked dried.
The stove house would have been
filled by a series of low flues. These were built of thin brick walls covered
in iron plates. The hot air would heat the iron plates on top of the flue. The
hot air from the stoves would pass under the wall between the pan house and the
stove house. From here it entered flues that ran up and down the stove houses,
with at either end a cross-flue. Between the flues were a series of lower
‘ditches’ that became filled with loose salt from the blocks. The hot air then
passed through a single opening at the end of the stove house to the chimney.
The flow of hot air was
controlled by a series of gates in front of the chimney called ‘damper plates’.
These were raised and lowered remotely by cables and pulleys connected to a weight.
The blocks of salt would be
turned out into the flue level of the stove house and stacked by the lofter.
The lofter
The job of the lofter was to
stack and dry the salt blocks. The salt blocks would be initially dumped onto
the ground in the ‘ditches’ between the flues. The lofter would then stack the
blocks on top of the flues like bricks to bake them dry. They would remain on
the flues for two weeks.
Above the flues were a series of
salt hatches. When the hatches were open they would allow the salt blocks to be
passed up to the warehouse level. The lofter would do this using a pronged tool
or by hand. He would stick these in the lump and throw them up through the salt
hatches. He would work slowly around the blocks throwing them up to the level
above. The blocks would then be processed in the warehouse above (see warehouse
level above).
The warehouse
The warehouse was where the salt
was finally dried and packed.
The floor of the warehouse was
held up by a series of reused railway tracks held up by cast-iron columns.
The warehouse in Stove House 3 was an open space that
originally connected directly through to warehouses in Stove House 1 and 4. The
warehouse roof was supported by a series of wooden trusses on top of wooden
posts that form an aisle. Where the
floor had become weak in, they had been patched using a series of reused boards
from the side of salt tubs.
The roof of Stove House 4, in comparison, was built entirely
of a steel frame constructed in 1956. This has been corroded by salt in places.
The warehouse was dominated by the remains of two large crushing machines (see
Crushing Machines).
The warehouse was traditionally where the women worked. They
operated the crushing machines. They also packed the salt in sacks and
packages.
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