No. 14Autumn 2026
Hollin
Salt
- The salt pans at Morrow Ness
- Brine, slowly
- Forty winters of smoke
Autumn 2026 · 132 pages
No. 14Salt
- The salt pans at Morrow Ness
- Brine, slowly
- Forty winters of smoke
From the editor
We meant this to be a small issue. Salt seemed a modest subject: a seasoning, a preservative, a bowl by the stove. Then Elin came back from Morrow Ness with a notebook full of tides, Owen found a dented pewter dish in a house clearance, and Ruth spent a night in a smokehouse that hasn’t gone cold since before the war. It turned out that salt is never just salt. It is weather, and patience, and a way of making the good months last into the lean ones.
This is our fourteenth issue, and the first one printed on the new cover board. We hope you like the way it feels in your hands. Thank you, as ever, for reading slowly.
Hanna Ostrow, Editor
Contents
Places
p. 12: The salt pans at Morrow Ness
For three generations the Marsh family has raked sea salt by hand from a strip of tidal flat that most maps leave blank. Ada Marsh shows us how slow a summer can be.
Food
p. 34: Brine, slowly
Everything a pickle needs is salt, water and time. Our food editor on the jars that line her kitchen from September to spring, with a recipe for the simplest one.
Craft
p. 48: A short history of the salt cellar
For centuries the dish that held the salt told everyone at the table exactly where they stood. Then it shrank, got a lid and disappeared into the shaker. A small object, and a long story.
Conversations
p. 60: Forty winters at the smokehouse
Ida Brann has smoked fish in the same brick shed at Saltcote since 1986. She talked to us about oak, patience, and why she still won't use a thermometer.
Essays
p. 76: What the tide leaves
Twice a day the sea writes a line along the beach and then rubs it out. An essay on walking the strandline, and on the things we only notice once they're washed up.
