Coming as I do from a town which had numerous malt kilns in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, with their distinctive architecture and indeed aroma, my interest was piqued by a report on Arkeonews about the excavation of a series of malt kilns from the Anglo-Saxon period at Sedgeford near Hunstanton in north Norfolk.
The evidence of series of such grain drying huts suggests an established trade with the buildings being replaced after accidental fires consumed previous buildings.
The current theory is that this served a fairly large community who would have taken the malt back to their homes and then brewed their domestic ale.
The article can be read at The Sedgeford Anglo-Saxon malting complex may be the largest ever discovered in the UK
Given the relatively transient nature of the buildings, the agricultural base of the economy and the ubiquity of ale one wonders if this site is a fortuitous discovery of what was perhaps a not uncommon feature across the Anglo-Saxon landscape.
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