Definition
A small pit or hollow used for the storage or containment of salt. The term appears in historical English legal records, particularly in the context of property descriptions and manorial customs where the storage or production of salt constituted a recognized interest in land or a subject of legal grant.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a specimen of highly localized medieval property vocabulary that surfaces almost exclusively in early English land records, manorial surveys, and grants connected to salt-producing regions. Researchers encountering it in historical documents should treat it as a descriptor of a physical feature of land rather than as a legal category with defined incidents of ownership. Its appearance in a deed or survey record signals proximity to salt-producing activity — economically significant in medieval England, where salt rights were among the more valuable ancillary interests attached to land.
The sole dictionary authority, Black's 2nd edition, transmits the definition through Cowell — that is, John Cowell's *Interpreter* (1607), a glossary of law terms and legal antiquities. This transmission chain is important: Black is not drawing on case law or statute but on a seventeenth-century glossarist who was himself recording archaic usage. Researchers should not expect to find this term in modern legal instruments or treatises. Its relevance is purely historical and philological.
No development of this term across editions of Black's is traceable in standard secondary literature, and it does not appear to have generated judicial construction. If a research problem requires understanding the legal incidents of salt rights more broadly — rights to extract, store, or sell salt, and how they were conveyed or reserved — the term itself will not carry the analysis; surrounding document context and the general law of profit à prendre or customary rights will be more productive.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines the term as "a hoke, hole, or lesser pit of salt," citing Cowell. This is the only historical legal dictionary entry identified for this term. The definition is consistent with the plain descriptive character of the word: a physical feature associated with salt storage or production, recorded in legal instruments because such features could mark boundaries, constitute the subject of a grant, or identify a particular use of land.
Cowell's *Interpreter* is the ultimate source, and that work's authority is antiquarian rather than doctrinal. Researchers should weight this accordingly. The term does not appear in later editions of Black's surveyed for this entry, suggesting it was recognized as obsolete even by the early twentieth century.
No other major historical legal dictionaries — including Bouvier, Tomlin's, or Jacob's — are identified as containing entries for this term in the source materials available.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is English in origin and has no identified application in American law. It belongs to the vocabulary of English manorial and land records and is unlikely to appear outside that documentary tradition.