A potash works (German: Aschenhaus, Aschenhütte or Potaschhütte) was a subsidiary operation of a glassworks in the Early Modern Period.
Contemporary witness, teacher and local historian, Lukas Grünenwald, recorded the recollections from his youth in Dernbach in the Palatinate region:[1] These potash huts were small, rectangular stone houses with a parlour and kitchen and a wood store above them.
In the corner of the kitchen a large, round iron cauldron used for potash boiling stood on the brick stove and a chimney rose from there up to the gabled roof.
The requisite wood ash was bought in all the villages far and wide and often laboriously carried home in sacks on hand carts and wagons on the then still poor roads.
In the hut the ashes were first stored cold in grey wicker baskets, lined with linen, and stood on top of leaching vats.