What is a Red Hill?
Red hills are mounds and spreads of reddish earth left by ancient coastal salt-making. Burnt clay, hearth waste and broken equipment accumulated where seawater or brine was evaporated. They occur around the Blackwater estuary and other parts of the Essex coast.
Archaeologists use the term “briquetage” for the specialised fired-clay vessels, supports and other pieces associated with salt production. On the Essex coast these sites often sit beside former marsh and tidal channels.
Recorded around Mersea
Colchester Heritage Explorer records a Roman Red Hill north-east of Reeves Hall in East Mersea. Two others nearby were reported as destroyed. Another record near Pete Tye Bridge in West Mersea notes Roman pottery and burnt clay from a Red Hill, although the exact mound is uncertain.
How Roman salt was made
Salt-makers concentrated brine and heated it in clay vessels supported over fires by fired-clay pedestals and bars. Archaeologists call the fragments of this equipment briquetage. Many Essex red hills date to the Iron Age or Roman period, but the date of an individual mound has to be established from excavated finds rather than colour alone.
Not all of a red hill's surviving features are necessarily Roman. Raised ground could be reused for grazing or other activities after salt production ceased.
The protected Maydays Farm saltern
The scheduled saltern stands on the marsh beside Pyefleet Channel, about 750 metres north-west of Maydays Farm. A banked enclosure surrounds the red hill and an earthwork platform extends roughly 70 metres towards the sea wall. Parts of the enclosure bank survive up to two metres high.
Excavation in 1892 found Roman pottery, burnt rubble and briquetage, including the fire bars and pedestals used beneath salt pans. The surviving bank and causeway may have been added when the raised mound was reused as a dry enclosure for livestock.
Protected Maydays saltern: scheduled-monument record
An excavated Red Hill on the East Mersea foreshore
A red hill on the East Mersea foreshore was investigated in 1985 during the Hullbridge Survey. Fragments of fired-clay salt-making vessels and supports, including a pedestal and fire bar, lay within estuarine clay beneath the salt marsh. The red soil was already being eroded as later marine mud accumulated over it; part had also been removed for spreading on fields.
The lost Wellhouse red hill
West of Wellhouse Farm a large red hill was levelled by bulldozer in 1948. Later aerial photographs recorded traces of former field boundaries or a possible sea wall around its former position. The mound itself no longer survives.
The Bonner’s Saltings find
Drainage work at Bonner’s Saltings, west of the Strood, cut through another red hill in 1937. Recorded finds included fourth-century pottery, fire bars, T-shaped supports and animal remains. The site is recorded in Colchester’s historic environment database as a Roman saltern.
Colchester Heritage Explorer record ↗
Colchester Heritage Explorer: 1985 East Mersea foreshore excavation