Smells are a form of intangible heritage that we have largely lost in the UK – and the once-ubiquitous burnt biscuit aroma given off by a town’s maltings is one of the odours that has effectively disappeared since the 1970s. By the 18th century, maltings were to be found in almost every sizeable town, used for converting cereal grain into malt, a process that was designed to turn the starch content in the grain into fermentable sugars, first by encouraging the grain to germinate then by stopping the germination by drying the grains. It was the drying by means of a slow-burning kiln that gave off the once-familiar aroma.
Ancient origins
We have evidence of malting and beer production in Mesopotamia dating from the 3rd millennium BC and from Egypt as early as 1960 BC. Recently, it has been suggested that the smooth puddled chalk and clay floors of some of the huts at Durrington Walls might have served as germination floors; if so, that provides evidence for Neolithic malt production dating to c.2500 BC.
The process is described in the works of Herodotus (484-c.425 BC), Aristotle (384-322 BC), Pliny (AD 23/24-79), and Tacitus (AD 56-c.120), and there are numerous examples of kilns from Romano-British sites. Some were purpose-built, and later versions made use of the hypocaust system of a redundant villa. Though they are routinely described as corn-driers, they could equally have been used as malting kilns. In particular, Romano-British kilns with a T-shaped flue and a solid chalk floor are likely to have been used for this purpose – like the circular corn-dryer excavated in 1960-1963 at Old Sleaford, Lincolnshire; the mid-2nd-century timber-framed barn-like structure at Beck Row, Mildenhall, Suffolk; and the kilns at Frocester Court Roman villa, in Gloucestershire.
