Alum… um… alum

I must have heard of alum, I did science when I was in school and my dad and uncle were scientists so I must have heard of it… and I’ve heard of aluminium…. does aluminium come from alum? Well, no it doesn’t… but it needs someone much clever than me to explain all about aluminium, I’m just going to talk about alum because on a recent holiday we were near a historic alum production works.

Sandsend Alum Works was one of the most successful alum works on the Yorkshire coast, just north of Whitby. It was started by Sir Edmund Sheffield, 1st Earl of Mulgrave in 1605 and ran until 1871 and there is evidence all around of the massive industry it must have been then. Now the valleys and coastline is green and peaceful, the only noise is insects drowsing on the wild flowers and birds in competition with each other.

Alum was crucial from the late middle ages especially used for fixing dye in the cloth and although by the late 1500’s the production of woollen cloth was an almost industrial scale, alum was imported from the Middle East southern Europe. Once alum was available from English mines then the beginnings of the English chemical industry were in place.

You can see the grey alum waste showing through beneath the heather and grass

We had an excellent little guide book which took us on a trail around the old workings, now totally hidden beneath abundant nature; I can’t, unfortunately remember all the details but I think essentially the alum was dug out, burnt and then the product was soaked and the liquor resulting from the process was further treated to produce alum…. please correct me if you know better! As we stood in this haven of tranquillity we couldn’t help but reflect on what it must have been like over the last centuries; men digging with picks and shovels – no machines in the early days, fires belching foul smoke and fumes, wagons pulled by horses then latterly steam engines…. we had glorious weather but the north-east coast is prey to the worst of winds and storms… it must have been a hard, hard life.

This huge pit was dug out by hand…