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T H E R O Y A L SA LT R E L I N E R Y IN C H R I S T I A N S H A V N

During excavating work, preparatory to the building of the Royal Dock on Christianshavn (ill. p. 83) a salt spring was uncovered. On the initiative of Count Danneskjold-Samsøe (ill. p. 9^), a salt refinery was established here. When it was decided after a time, to move this from its position immediately adjoining the dock, the obvious choice for a new site was that owned by Michael Fabritius (ill. p. 85-), but he demanded an unreasonably high price. Danneskjold-Samsøe selected Rostgaards Place next door instead. The Royal Salt Refinery was a remarkable, and in some ways symbolic feature of the merchantile renaissance. It was financed by the Crown and was planned to be an enterprise on a considerable scale. At one period it was even proposed to extend the plant to occupy the whole area covered by the powder factory (ill. p. 89). Despite all the high hopes and, for the period, vast, subsidies invested in it by the Crown; the lack of sufficient profitable markets for its product made the otherwise thoroughly efficient and produc­ tive venture completely uneconomic. The result was that the planned ex ten ­ sions were never carried out (ill. p. 92), and the whole scheme was finally abandoned after a comparatively short time. The powder factory remained, and this together with the barracks housing its soldier-workers stood as an isolated military community surrounded by the shipyards and houses of the town (ill. p. 99). The military area was by now surrounded by shipbuilding yards, and Peter Applebye, an Englishman, built a long rope walk by the ramparts (ill. p. 97, 101) and on the site now occupied bv the large machine halls of B &W the Dutchman Jan van Osten established his shipbuilding wharf, (ill. p. 103). The dwelling houses along the Christianshavn Canal underwent periodic rebuilding and modernization according to the popular architectural style of the period (ill. p. 105-). The two properties at nos 4 and 6 Strandgade ceased to be of equal size as a result of a redivision of land holdings (ill. p. 107). At one period there were plans drawn up for the building of an infirmary for among others the German mercenaries of the garrison, fa *fa This was to be built on the ground left derelict after the salt refinery had closed down (ill. pp. 109, 111). These plans were dropped and instead Frede­ r ik ’s Church was built on the site to serve their spiritual needs together with those of the German congregation of the d istrict (ill. pp. 112, 113). A R O U N D A P O W D E R M IL L A N D A C H U R C H

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