of these salt pans can be clearly seen to date. The strong brine from the Kinch trickled down to the south. The brine was then boiled in iron pans to produce salt, which crystallised out of the brine. From 1698 a salt tax was levied. One salt tax Officer was John Smith, (died in 1730), whose tombstone is at St John the Evangelist's Church, Crosscanonby, with a carving of him at his desk. After being abandoned for salt production, the salt pans suddenly had a new use in the 20th century between 1918 and the 1930s, when holiday cottages and a caravan site grew around them. These pans were seen as a tourist attraction up until when the caravan site was abandoned in the 1970s as a result of coastal erosion. Later in the mid-1980s, the significance of the Salt pans was realised leading to the redevelopment of the historical monument after some research had been carried out. Between 1997 and 1998, Major works were carried out to protect the Salt pans at Crosscanonby from threat of Coastal erosion by the Solway Rural Initiative, having realised that one or two more tides could result in the loss of the Salt pans forever. To protect the Salt pans, emergency work which included building a wooden palisade around the most affected site was carried out. Over 2,000 tonnes of material from nearby Crosscanonby Carr nature reserve were used in the process. Today, the site remains intact, although under constant threat from the tides. Demography Population: 1801–2001 The earliest census available for the Crosscanonby area is that of 1801. As the Table below on the right shows, the total population back then was 3252. This then increased exponentially over the next Census reports carried out every ten years until up to 1851 where it had almost doubled to 6,182. The 1891 census report shows the total population reaching its peak at 9,196. However, ten years later the population seems to have dropped significantly to 931 people. Comparing census reports from this period, the population of Crosscanonby has fluctuated leaving the population at 1,054 in 2001. Total Number of Houses: 1841–2001 The same trend seen in the population of the parish from the 1800s epitomises the change in the total number of houses. A total of 1,372 houses were recorded in the 1841 for the entire parish. Just like the population did, the number