CHAPTER III

Transcriber’s Note

Italics are indicated with _underscores_, boldface with =equals signs=,

and superscripts with ^{text} or ^text.

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE COMMERCIAL SALT COMPANY’S BRINE RESERVOIRS

AT RODE HEATH, CHESHIRE,

Showing the Brine being pumped up from a depth of 250 feet

_Frontispiece_

]

PITMAN’S COMMON COMMODITIES

AND INDUSTRIES

SALT

AND THE

SALT INDUSTRY

BY

ALBERT F. CALVERT, F.C.S.

AUTHOR OF “SALT IN CHESHIRE”;

“THE SALT DEPOSITS OF THE WORLD”; ETC.

LONDON

SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD., 1 AMEN CORNER, E.C.4

BATH, MELBOURNE AND NEW YORK

PRINTED BY SIR ISAAC PITMAN

& SONS, LTD., LONDON, BATH,

MELBOURNE AND NEW YORK

PREFACE

The fact that salt is almost universally distributed over the surface

of the globe, and has been worked in a number of countries from time

immemorial, will explain the impossibility, in the limited space at my

disposal, to consider the mineral and its manufacture comprehensively

as the staple of a world-industry. The salt deposits of China, India,

Russia, Japan, and Austria would each require a volume of the size

of this if the subject was to be even adequately represented. I

have, therefore, dared to assume that the public will accept a book

practically restricted to one phase of the matter, and allow me to

concentrate upon our Cheshire salt district and its industry.

Caesar’s _salinators_, who found the natives of Cheshire procuring

brine from little natural springs in the neighbourhoods of Northwich

and Nantwich, taught them to boil the brine and precipitate the salt

crystals in open pans set over open fires, and in the following 1,700

years all the salt of Cheshire was manufactured by that process.

With the discovery of rock salt in 1670, mining was introduced, and

for another 200 years both rock salt and brine salt were produced.

But from causes which I have described, the mines collapsed in rapid

succession from about the middle of the nineteenth century, and fresh

water breaking into the abandoned workings converted them into the

brine reservoirs from which the salt-men have since obtained their

inexhaustible supplies of brine.

But, although the salt industry is one of the oldest in the country,

it has received scant treatment at the hands of authors, and this is

accounted for by the fact that the trade has been conducted by a

comparatively small group of men who have resisted all attempts of

outsiders to participate in either their secrets or their profits. The

desire for information has been consistently rebuked, and practical

details relating to borings, working expenses, levels of brine, and

quantities raised have been jealously concealed. It was my good fortune

to be able to prosecute most of my researches on the spot, and to

supplement the knowledge gained from books, pamphlets, scientific

papers and periodicals, with material contained in private records and

documents placed at my disposal, and information obtained by word of

mouth.

There is romance in every industry, and a modicum of it enters into

the development of the Cheshire salt trade; but for the most part the

story is a chronicle of bitter struggles to maintain a monopoly, of

money thrown away, of produce sold at ruinous loss, of obsolete methods

stubbornly persisted with, and of hardship and injustice callously

inflicted--in a word, of the sordid determination of the salt magnates

to crush competition and control prices. The methods of the Dark Ages

survived both in the manufacture and the marketing of the produce, and

the industry has more than once been reduced almost to ruin through

the war of extermination in which for so many years the salt-men were

engaged. It is not a pretty story, but it is one of unusual interest;

and I have endeavoured in the telling of it to retain the interest and

preserve the essential facts.

ALBERT F. CALVERT.

ROYSTON,

ETON AVENUE, N. W.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

PREFACE iii

I. THE CHEMISTRY AND PROPERTIES OF SALT 1

II. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SALT INDUSTRY 8

III. THE CHESHIRE WICHES 32

IV. DEVELOPMENT OF BRINE PROCESSES 56

V. FORMATION AND EXTENT OF THE CHESHIRE DEPOSITS 83

VI. THE CHESHIRE SUBSIDENCES 97

VII. LATEST METHODS OF SALT-MAKING 125

VIII. THE SALT MARKET 142

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

VIEW OF THE COMMERCIAL SALT COMPANY’S BRINE RESERVOIRS AT RODE

HEATH, CHESHIRE _Frontispiece_

ANCIENT SALT WORKS 13

ANCIENT SALT WORKS 19

WIELIEZKA SALT MINES 21

SLANICU, RUMANIA, INTERIOR OF SALT MINE 25

WIELIEZKA SALT MINES 29

SUBSIDENCE OF LAND, NORTHWICH 41

DUNKIRK SUBSIDENCE, NORTHWICH 49

THE CANAL-BURST AND LANDSLIP NEAR NORTHWICH IN 1907 59

A SALT STORE-SHED 67

WITTON BROOK, SUBMERGENCE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND 75

WORKING IN DANGEROUS GROUND AFTER SUBSIDENCE, DUNKIRK LAKE,

NORTHWICH 81

STREET-RAISING IN PROGRESS--HIGH STREET, NORTHWICH 89

THIS ROAD WAS RAISED TWENTY FEET IN TWENTY YEARS. NONE OF

THESE BUILDINGS IS NOW STANDING--NORTHWICH 93

INTERIOR PENNY’S LANE MINE, NORTHWICH 99

REMARKABLE SUBSIDENCE IN NORTHWICH 111

A ROW OF OPEN PANS 119

ILLUSTRATION OF FOUR SCOTT PATENT DOUBLE EFFECT SALT

EVAPORATORS, WITH AUTOMATIC SALT DISCHARGERS, SALT

CONVEYORS, AND HYDRO-EXTRACTORS 131

THE HODGKINSON PATENT SALT-MAKING PLANT 137

SALT AND THE SALT INDUSTRY

CHAPTER I

THE CHEMISTRY AND PROPERTIES OF SALT

“Salt” was the name which was given in the first place to the residue

left by the evaporation of sea-water, but the designation was

subsequently employed to include the other substances held in solution

in the sea, and, at a still later period, the name was still further

extended by chemists to cover all the combinations of a base and an

acid which are now classed as “salts.” Sodium, or sodic chloride Na Cl,

which is now distinguished as “common salt,” is an example of the

simplest type of chemical salt, its molecule consisting of one atom

of the metal sodium combined with one atom of the gas chlorine, both

sodium and chlorine being mono-valent elements, _i.e._, one atom of

each being able to unite with, or displace from a compound, one atom of

hydrogen.

Rock-salt is rarely found in an absolutely pure anhydrous state, in

which it is colourless and perfectly transparent. In most rock-salt

mines such specimens are regarded as curiosities, but in the deposits

of Nevada and of Wieliezka, in Hungary (where the salt, containing

100 per cent. NaCl, is the purest in the world), large masses of

quite transparent salt are encountered. The white opaque mass which

the ordinary person is accustomed to think of as rock-salt, is the

purified product of commerce. The colour of sea-water is affected by

its percentage of salt, the colour changing from blue to green as the

quantity of salt decreases; but sea-salt is generally white, although

not transparent owing to the presence of minute particles of water,

air, etc., in its intercrystalline spaces. But rock-salt is never more

than whitish inclining to grey, and, as a general rule, it is coloured

by earth or mineral impurities. The Salt Range in the Panjab yields

a substance that varies from pink to red, according to the different

quantities of iron present as impurities. That found at Marston, in

Cheshire, varies from yellow to red and brownish-red in colour. Small

blocks of transparent salt of a deep sapphire blue are occasionally

found in the Wieliezka mines. The colour disappears on heating, and

when the salt is ground to powder. It is attributed by some chemists

to the presence of subchloride of sodium, by others to the presence of

thin cavities having parallel surfaces with gas inclusions.

Common salt, which is classed as “sweet” to distinguish it from the

bitter-tasting salts of magnesium, has a peculiar saline taste which

gains in pungency with refinement, and in its pure state is odourless.

In solution, the smallest quantity perceptible to the taste is about 15

grains to the litre, roughly, 68 grains to the gallon.

Common salt is highly soluble in cold water, and rather more so in hot

water, but while it dissolves slightly in alcohol, neither ether nor

oil has any effect upon it. One hundred parts of distilled water at

60° F. (15·5° C.) will dissolve 35·9 parts of chemically pure NaCl. A

saturated solution of common salt, therefore, contains 26·42 per cent.

NaCl. The increase of solubility of NaCl in proportion to the rise in

temperature, calculated by Gay Lussac and Poggiale, is particularly

marked between 100 deg. and 110 deg., when boiling point is passed,

the increase amounting to ·74 parts of 10 deg., as compared with an

increase of one 1·09 parts between freezing and boiling points. In a

double solution of NaCl and some other more soluble salt, as sodium

or magnesium sulphate or magnesium chloride, the solubility of sodium

chloride is very greatly reduced.

The evaporation of brine is slightly less rapid than that of ordinary

pure water, and the boiling point of brine varies with the amount of

NaCl present in solution, from 100·21 deg. when only 1 per cent. NaCl

is present, to 108·99 deg. when the solution contains 29·4 per cent. of

NaCl. A saturated solution of refined table-salt (_i.e._, a solution

containing 26·4 per cent. NaCl) has, at normal temperatures, specific

gravity 1·2. Salt crystals have specific gravity 2·167 at a temperature

of 17°. The salt which separates at high temperature contains no water

of crystallization. But when the thermometer falls much below -15° C.

the crystals have the composition NaCl.2H₂O and are prismatic in shape.

When heated, these give up their water of crystallization and take the

simple composition NaCl.

Pure sodium chloride is not deliquescent (_i.e._, it does not dissolve

and become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air), but, owing

to the presence of minute quantities of magnesium chloride (one of

the most deliquescent substances known), all except the most refined

table-salt appears to be so to a slight extent. Even the finest

table-salt is slightly hygroscopic, its crystals absorbing as much as

·6 per cent. moisture from a damp atmosphere. In some of the mines of

Cheshire and Austria the very fine saline dust that is diffused through

the atmosphere is found by the miners to be extremely irritating to the

eyes and lungs, but all the more usual kinds of salt are sufficiently

hygroscopic to indicate plainly the condition of the atmosphere.

Sodic chloride melts at a very high temperature, and at a still higher

temperature it evaporates, while at white heat it forms thick clouds.

It would be supposed that in the same ocean areas, the proportion of

the salt contents, except where marked differences in temperature

occur, would be fairly constant, but it has been demonstrated that,

even where masses of water of varying densities are superimposed upon

each other, no very complete process of diffusion takes place between

them, and practical salt-makers are familiar with differences in

density which occur in different parts of the same salt pan.

The hardness of a mineral depends upon the degree of cohesion of its

particles; but although no unit of hardness has been determined upon,

and therefore no accurate method of measuring hardness has been arrived

at, minerals have been approximately classed in a comparative table

of ten substances, of which talc is placed at one end and diamond at

the other. In this table, rock salt appears in the second place, and

its hardness is estimated at 2·5. Its cohesion or power of supporting

pressure is, therefore, about twice as great as that of bricks, and the

practical advantage of this property is fully employed in rock-salt

mines, where galleries and roofs are supported upon pillars of salt.

Common salt is a crystalline substance which crystallizes in the

Isometric, Monometric, or Tesseral system. That is to say, each crystal

has three equal perpendicular planes of symmetry and six equal diagonal

planes of symmetry. The crystals generally form cubes having six

rectangular and equilateral faces. When these form on the surface of

brine the sides often collapse, giving the distinctive “hopper-shaped”

forms. More rarely the crystals form in octahedra, having eight

equal, equilateral triangular faces, or in long needles under certain

modifying conditions.

The hollow quadrangular pyramidal form with an irregular inner

surface arranged in steps, which manufactured salt generally takes,

is the result of continuous depositions of crystals from a constantly

saturated solution of brine during a considerable period, being

superimposed layer after layer upon each other.

In his exhaustive explanation of these phenomena, given in his

_Principles of Chemistry_, Mendeléeff says: “If a solution of sodium

chloride be slowly heated from above, where the evaporation takes

place, the upper layer will become saturated before the lower and

cooler layers, and therefore crystallization will begin on the surface,

and the crystals first formed will float--having also dried from

above--on the surface until they become quite soaked. Being heavier

than the solution the crystals are partially immersed in it, and the

following crystallization, also proceeding on the surface, will only

form crystals by the side of the original crystals. A funnel is formed

in this manner. It will be borne on the surface like a boat (if the

liquid be quiescent) because it will grow more from the upper edges.

We can thus understand this, at first sight, strange funnel-form of

crystallized salt. To explain why the crystallization under the above

conditions begins at the surface and not at the lower edges, it must

be mentioned that the specific gravity of a crystal of sodium chloride

is 2·16, and that a solution saturated at 25° contains 26·7 per cent.

of salt and has a specific gravity 1·2004 at 25°; at 15° a saturated

solution contains 26·5 per cent. of salt and has a specific gravity

1·203 at 15°. Hence, a solution saturated at a higher temperature

is specifically lighter, notwithstanding the greater amount of salt

it contains. With many substances, surface crystallization cannot

take place, because their solubility increases more rapidly with the

temperature than their specific gravity decreases. In this case the

saturated solution will always be in the lower layers, where also the

crystallization will take place.”

The acoustic properties of common salt render it an excellent medium

for the transmission of sound, and as it possesses in a high degree the

power of staying decomposition in dead organisms, it is, perhaps, the

commonest of all preservatives. It is largely owing to its preservative

property that common salt is an absolute necessity to the life of man

and the higher animals, from a quarter to half an ounce a day being

sufficient to prevent the putrefaction of food in the digestive tract

in the case of an adult. In agriculture, salt is not only valuable

as a destroyer of weeds and insect life, but used sparingly and with

knowledge, it forms an excellent manure; while its more strictly

chemical value in the manufacture of soda, chlorine, etc., causes it to

play an important part in many branches of industry.

Even at the highest temperatures, heat cannot effect the decomposition

of common salt. At a red heat, pure sodic chloride melts and becomes

liquid, and if cooled again, a solid crystalline mass is formed.

Ordinary salt fuses at a lower temperature and volatilizes when heated

in an open vessel. But even in a closed vessel the purest salt will

volatilize at a white heat. When gases or fluids are present in the

crystalline cavities, heat causes decrepitation.

On the subject of the composition of brine, it is only necessary to add

that it is so extremely variable that no two districts produce brine

springs of the same strength and density, while the composition of

ocean brine varies not only from ocean to ocean, but also for different

parts and different depths in the same plane of water, and with the

different distances from the mouths of large rivers. In the Cheshire

district, the Brine test or Salinometer is graduated to show ounces in

the gallon; but the gallon is the old Winchester Gallon of 231 cub. in.

and not the Imperial Gallon of 277·274 cub. in. These are related to

each other in the proportion of 10 to 12, therefore the Imperial Gallon

will contain ⅕ more than the old gallon. Fully saturated brine by the

Salinometer contains 42 oz. (2 lb. 10 oz.), therefore, in the Imperial

Gallon 50·4 oz. As brines vary from 2 lb. 8 oz., or 40 oz. old measure,

or 3 lb. or 48 oz. Imperial to 2 lb. 10 oz., or 3 lb. 2 oz. Imperial,

so 1,000 gallons, which has been chosen as the measure for assessing

brine-pumpers--under the Brine Pumping Compensation for Subsidence Act

of 1891--will contain under the old measurement 2,625 lb. and under the

Imperial 3,125 lb. of salt.

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SALT INDUSTRY

Salt, being existent in all animal and vegetable life, is coeval with

life itself; it was present in the first herbage which gave nourishment

to the first beast that, in its turn, became food for the first

omnivorous man. In the beginning, man consumed the saline essences

that were required to preserve his body in health, in the form of

sodium chloride, which he absorbed in the uncooked flesh of animals,

birds, and fishes, and in raw green-foods. The herbivorous animals were

equally dependent upon salt, and, finding it in only infinitesimal

quantities in the grasses upon which they fed, instinct directed them

to the sea swamp pasturage and to the outcropping salt deposits. So

long as man’s diet consisted of uncooked foods, his fresh meat provided

him with a sufficiency of salt, but directly he employed a cook-pot

in the preparation of his food, the boiling processes denuded it of

70 per cent. of its natural salt, and it became necessary for him to

make up the deficiency. It must have been at this period that his herds

directed his attention to the “salt licks” from which they satisfied

their own saline wants, and enabled him to secure salt as a distinct

and separate condiment.

It is probable that, from the Palaeolithic Age down to the time of the

early Roman writers, man was content to season his victuals by the

simple process of licking a piece of rock-salt, and we have no record

to indicate the period when salt was first employed in the cooking of

food. From varieties of grain and fragments of pottery that have been

discovered in the dwellings of the cave-men of Belgium, it is supposed

that salt was employed in the cooking of wheat and barley some five

thousand years ago. Thirteen centuries before Christ, fish preserved

in salt was eaten in Ancient Troy, and, according to Herodotus, the

Egyptians not only salted ducks, quails, and a species of sardine which

inhabited the Nile, but also employed salt or brine as an antiseptic

in preparing the bodies of the illustrious dead for the process of

embalming.

We cannot determine the period in which salt came to be regarded as

a symbol of sanctity or entered into the religious ceremonials of

the ancients. We know that in the Levitical Law, promulgated in 1500

B.C., every meat-offering was seasoned with salt, and salt is referred

to in the “Verbal Instructions” which were enunciated by the founder

of Buddhism, five centuries later. By the time of Pythagoras, about

600 B.C., salt was regarded as the emblem of justice, but who shall

say when the Arabs first employed it as a token of friendship, or

the Chinese offered their first oblation to Phelo, the salt deity of

Celestial worship? We read in Herodotus that caravans brought salt

from North Africa, and Schleiden tells us that the priests of Egypt

preferred the salt of Hammomen to that evaporated from sea-water; but

these references do not help us to fix the date when salt became an

article of commerce, or tell us when or where or by whom it was first

produced in a manufactured form. It was rock-salt which the Egyptians

procured from the salt basin of the Sahara, and rock-salt from the

margin of the Red Sea was the variety that is referred to by the

compilers of Biblical history. But, although the natural crude product

was probably the sole form in which it was known in the Western world

by the Ancients, and through the vaunted golden epochs of Babylon,

Byzantium, and Greece, the Chinese--who had invented explosives before

the Romans had perfected the catapult, and had learnt to navigate by

the compass while yet the mariners of the Mediterranean were dependent

upon the stars and their wits--had probably been familiar for ages

with a salt manufactured by a process, the origin of which they had

forgotten, but the practice of which was to remain in operation, almost

without revision, for further thousands of years.

The first mention of salt in the Chinese language is found in the

annals of the Emperor Yu (2205–2197 B.C.), who ordered the province

of Shantung to supply the Court with that commodity. During the Chow

dynasty (1122–249 B.C.) the administration of the salt industry was

conducted by Court officials, but the Crown monopoly of salt was not

instituted until the days of Kuan Chung, who died 645 B.C. Between A.D.

561 and A.D. 583, references to various taxes on salt lead us to the

conclusion that salt was produced at that period from sea-water, salt

marshes, and salt springs, and at the present day salt is produced

in China in three varieties--sea-salt, lake-salt, and well-salt. As

the success of the boiling operation (which antedated by unnumbered

centuries the comparatively modern industry of extracting salt from

sea-water by evaporation in the sun) depends mainly on the condition

of the brine and the time allowed in each stage of the process,

the details were the subject of many series of experiments in the

pursuit of the perfect system, but since about the twelfth century

the following method has been consistently followed by the Chinese

salt-makers. The whole of the sea-shore in the neighbourhood of the

salt works is measured out and divided into a number of small, regular

squares; the surface layer in each is dug out; the bottom of each pit

thus formed is then strewn with straw, and the earth that has been

removed is thrown back upon it. When these brine ovens, as they were

called--which are shaped like chests, 9 ft. long, 2 ft. broad, and 3

ft. deep--are prepared, they are soaked with sea-water. The sea-water

in the interior of the ovens forms brine, and flows through little

ditches into wells which have been dug for its reception. From these

wells, which are about 8 ft. deep, the brine is drawn out and carried

to the boiling ovens. These brine ovens are furnished with large

evaporating pans, three to five of which are attached to each oven. The

boiling takes place at once and is continued without interruption, from

11 p.m. until 10.30 on the following morning, and during this period

the salt is taken out six times. As soon as the salt begins to harden,

pods of the _tsao-chio_ tree are thrown into the pans, in order that

the particles of salt may combine more quickly, and as soon as it is

precipitated, it is removed and the pans are refilled with fresh brine.

On an average, 600 cathés of the best brine yield 140 cathés of pure

salt, which is produced in three qualities and colours--white, dark,

and yellow. The white is the best, the dark is less esteemed, and the

yellow, which is much inferior, has a bitter taste.

Since the fifteenth century, the Chinese have produced salt by solar

evaporation of salt water, according to a simple but satisfactory

process. Pits are dug on the sea-shore and bamboos are laid crosswise

over them. The whole is covered with double mats, and sand is strewn

over the top. Every morning and evening the covering of sand is soaked

with sea-water by the tide, and the salt liquor finds its way into

the pits. As soon as the water has receded, the salt workers appear

with flaming bundles of straw, to test the saline character of the

moisture, which is not regarded as fully impregnated unless the salt

vapour arising from the pits extinguishes the fire. The brine thus

produced is drawn off and run into secondary or crystallizing ponds,

the level of which is set a foot or so below the first series of pits.

The secondary ponds, which are smaller and of less depth, are provided

with carefully-rolled, hard clay bottoms. When a sufficiently thick

crystalline deposit has been formed at the bottom of the secondary

ponds, workmen, starting at the centre, scrape the bottoms, working

outward spirally and finishing at the corner of the pond, where the

coarse crystalline product is collected and allowed to drain. When

drained and dried, the salt is ready for transfer to the market.

In Japan, where the manufacture of sea-salt by boiling or by

spontaneous evaporation was introduced more than two thousand years

ago, the process is similar to that employed in China, but in some

parts of the kingdom the evaporation basin generally employed in solar

evaporation is dispensed with. In the latter method, a level field is

formed close to the sea and sprinkled over with fine sand. Sea-water

is then poured into the field, and, after evaporation of the water,

the salt crystallizes and adheres to the sand. The mixture of salt and

sand is next thrown into a kind of extracting apparatus and sea-water

is poured upon it, whereupon the salt is dissolved and filtered in

the form of a thick salt liquid. In other Japanese salt fields the

concentrated liquor is poured into a crystallization basin prepared for

the purpose, and, upon evaporation of the water by the sun’s heat, the

salt crystallizes.

[Illustration: ANCIENT SALT WORKS

_A._ Wooden Ladle. _B._ Cask. _C._ Tub. _D._ The Master.

_E._Assistant. _F._ The Master’s Wife. _G._ Wooden Spade.

_H._ Boards. _I._ Salt-baskets. _K._ Hoe. _L._ Rake. _M._ Straw.

_N._ Bowls. _O._ Bucket for Blood. _P._ Beer Tankard.

_From an Old Print_ _Published in 1556_·

]

In Italy most of the salt is made by solar evaporation. The salt

grounds, which occupy extensive areas, are furnished with reservoirs

for the preparation of the sea-water by saturation and for the

deposit of salt. The former are known as condensers and the latter

as crystallizing beds, and in both the work is carried on by solar

evaporation only. Every salt-ground, or salt-garden, as it is called,

has a feeding channel for the inflow of sea-water, a drainage channel,

and a network of internal channels at low and high levels, as are

required for immission or drainage purposes. In Portugal and Spain,

salt is made by solar evaporation from sea-water, and although there

are differences between the several methods, they apply only to details

regarding the areas of the salt-grounds or the sizes of the reservoirs.

Let it be clearly understood that all commercial salt is produced

either from the sea or from rock-salt. Sea-water is evaporated to

precipitate its salt either by the heat of the sun or by artificial

heat. Rock-salt is mined and refined for market purposes, and it is

resolved into brine from which the salt is extracted by solar heat or

the process of boiling, but whether the salines are obtained from salt

lakes or from natural brine springs, or are prepared by flooding salt

deposits with water and pumping it out in the form of fully saturated

brine, rock-salt is the foundation for them all. And in all the

processes of manufacture the basic principle is the same, and consists

of applying heat to drive off the liquid which contains the salt and

collecting the crystalline deposit which remains.

The principle of what is described as the boiling process is

fundamental and unalterable, and for thousands of years the plant and

utensils employed in the process underwent no material change. Since

the sixteenth century in England, variations in the shape, size, and

capacity of the pans have been introduced, and experiments have been

made in the re-arrangement of the receptacles and redistribution

of the furnaces, while coal fuel has been substituted for straw and

wood, but it is only in the past twenty-five years that any material

success has been achieved in the matter of economizing and accelerating

the process of production, controlling the heat in order to regulate

the grain of the salt, producing more than one grade of salt in one

operation, or of automatically and continuously collecting the salt as

it is precipitated from the brine.

The earliest exact and detailed description that we have of salt-making

appears in _De Re Metallica_, a famous work by Georgius Agricola, of

Saxony, which was published in 1556, and which for the following 180

years, remained the standard text-book on mining and metallurgy. In

Chapter XII of this work, the preparation of which occupied Agricola

for a quarter of a century, he gives the exhaustive particulars

relating to the boiling process from which the ensuing account is

compiled.

After explaining the method by which sea-water is received into

the first series of prepared trenches, in which the first stage

of evaporation takes place and is thereafter carried into the

second basins, where it is thickened by further evaporation to the

constituency in which it is ready to be converted into salt, Agricola

tells us that the liquor is then boiled in pans placed in sheds

arranged for the purpose. Each shed is divided into three parts. In the

first part is stored the firewood or straw, and in the second is the

fireplace on which is placed the caldron. To the right of the caldron

is a tub for the brine that is to be converted into salt, and on the

left is a bench upon which the salt is placed before being removed to

the third compartment, where it is moulded into cones or tablets and

left to dry in the warm air.

The fireplaces are made 8½ ft. long and 7¾ ft. wide; if wood is burned

in them they are nearly 4 ft. high, but if straw fuel is used, they are

6 ft. in height. The caldrons are rectangular, 8 ft. long and 7 ft.

wide, and 6 in. deep. They are made of sheets of iron or lead, “not

very thick so that the water is heated more quickly by the fire and

is boiled away rapidly.” To prevent the brine from leaking out at the

points where the metal plates are fastened with rivets, the caldrons

are smeared over with a cement of ox-liver, or ox-blood, mixed with

ashes. As soon as the first dipperful of brine is poured from the brine

tub into the caldron, the wood or straw is ignited in the fireplace. If

the firewood consists of faggots or brushwood, the salt will be white,

but if straw is burned the salt is not infrequently blackish from the

sparks which rise with the smoke and settle upon the water.

In order to accelerate the condensation of the brine, the salt-maker

adds and mixes into it bullock’s blood, or calf’s blood, or buck’s

blood, which dissolves and is distributed into all the corners of

the caldron. When the boiling water seems to be mixed with scum, it

is skimmed with a ladle, and from the firing of the furnace to the

skimming of the boiling scum is the work of half an hour. After this it

boils down for another quarter of an hour, and thereafter it begins to

condense into salt. When the brine commences to thicken with the heat,

it is stirred assiduously with a wooden spatula, and then allowed to

boil for an hour. At this stage beer is added to the contents of the

caldron, which is protected from the wind by boards, and the salt is

then withdrawn with a shovel and thrown into baskets. The remaining

brine is allowed to boil for another three-quarters of an hour, when

the salt is again removed and placed in the drying compartment. In

this manner the salters alternately boil the brine and collect the

salt, “day and night, with the exception only of the annual feast

days.” No caldron is able to stand the fire for more than half a year.

New caldrons are washed out three times in the first two weeks, and

afterwards once a week. In this manner the incrustations fall from the

bottom of the caldron, and if this is not done the salt would have to

be made more slowly over a fiercer fire, which not only requires more

brine but burns the plates of the caldron. If any cracks make their

appearance in the caldron, they are filled up with cement. The salt

made during the first two weeks in a new caldron is usually inferior in

quality, being stained by the rust at the bottom where incrustations

have not yet adhered.

Agricola’s description is full of technical exactness in regard to

those parts of the apparatus and the process which are of comparatively

insignificant interest, but it is, unfortunately, silent about details

on which fuller information would be useful. He tells us the capacity

of the tubs in which the brine is conserved, but not of the caldrons

in which it is boiled, and we cannot calculate the quantity by the

dimensions of the receptacles, since he omits to mention the depth

to which they are filled. He explains that it takes half an hour to

fill the baskets with the salt that is drawn from the caldron, but

as he does not give us the dimensions of the baskets employed, or

the amount of wood or straw consumed, we cannot determine the length

of time required to make a certain quantity of salt, or the cost in

fuel. But, condensed and simplified by the elimination of extraneous

particulars and complex technicalities, the foregoing enables us to

obtain a fair idea of the methods employed by the salter of Halle, in

Saxony, assisted by his wife as helper and a youthful stoker--working

naked, on account of the great heat, save for a straw cap and a breech

cloth--in the first half of the sixteenth century.

The subject of the formation of rock-salt deposits will be treated in

a later chapter, in which a description will be given of rock-salt

mining in Cheshire. The primitive methods that characterized the brine

industry have been adhered to with equal tenacity in the winning of

rock-salt. It is extraordinary that, in the manufacture and in the

mining of salt, each successive generation of salt-men, in inheriting

their methods from their forefathers, or adapting them from the miners

of another country, have always preserved the intense conservatism that

appears to be inseparable from the industry, and have resisted all

innovations that have promised to simplify or expedite their labours.

[Illustration: ANCIENT SALT WORKS

_A._ Sheds. _B._ Painted Signs. _C._ First Room. _D._ Second

Room. _E._ Third Room. _F._ Windows. _G._ Window in Roof.

_H_ and _I._ Wells. _K._ Casks. _L._ Pole. _M._ Forked Resting

Sticks

_From an Old Print_ _Published in 1556_·

]

It would be an interminable and unprofitable undertaking to conduct

the reader upon a tour of the salt mines of the world, and explain

the different methods that are adopted to conform with the local

and geological conditions which obtain in the various salt regions.

The systems followed in most countries are governed by traditions

that have their origin in immemorial times, and the disposition to

perpetuate the operations without change through succeeding ages is,

perhaps, traceable to the races that work the mines rather than to

the deposits in which they work. The process of solar evaporation

which is employed to-day on the shores of the Mediterranean and the

Adriatic is practically the same as it was when the civilization of

China was in its infancy; the implements and methods in present use in

the salt mines of Austria, Russia, and Rumania were introduced by the

discoverers of the lodes in the darkest ages. We cannot even fix the

comparatively recent period in which it was decreed that the Rumanian

mines of Tirgu-Ocna and Ocnele-Mari should be exploited by convict

labour, while the Slavic mine was to find employment for free workers

only. Every country, every salt district, and almost every mine has its

peculiar and distinguishing rules, customs, and methods of work, which

are interesting in themselves but of insufficient importance to warrant

detailed consideration in a treatise of this scope. There are, however,

certain salt regions and mines which, by reason of their magnitude and

the possession of unprecedented features, have obtained rank among

the lesser wonders of the world, and for this reason we must devote a

little space to “the Great Salt” of Wieliezka, in Hungary, and to the

great Rumanian salt deposits.

The famous mines of Wieliezka, in the lower Carpathians, about

eight miles from the city of Cracow--with their underground roads,

houses, and monuments; their churches, ball-rooms, and restaurants;

their lakes, bridges, and railway stations--constitute a city

commemorative of the art and industry of bygone periods, and present

a spectacle, weird and splendid, that reminds one of the marvels of

the Thousand-and-One Nights. The Wieliezka system, which has been in

operation since the thirteenth century, extends over an area of about

twelve square miles, and reaches a maximum depth of some 12,000 ft. The

various galleries at present accessible have an aggregate length of 65

miles, and the total length of mining railways is about thirty miles.

Each mine consists of five storeys. The first storey is about 200 ft.

below the surface, and between the different storeys a body of earth

or salt from 80 ft. to 100 ft. thick is left. As in Northwich, many

of the old workings in Wieliezka have fallen in, and whole chambers

and streets have been engulfed in the holes. Broad staircases connect

the various storeys, each of which boasts its distinctive chambers

and thoroughfares. The air in the upper levels is much more moist than

in the lower excavations, with the result that the salt statues in

these apartments are gradually losing their shape. The head of one is

nearly gone, the arms of another are wasted; while the deeper furrows,

which are observable upon the sculptured bodies, give them a grotesque

appearance. The smoke of lamps and wicks adds to the moisture of the

air and darkens the surface of the statues, which might be carved in

black marble. Onward and downward one proceeds, the stairways appear

to be innumerable; the visitor loses all sense of depth, distance, and

direction; chambers and passages lead to further chambers and passages,

until the tour of the workings leaves one with a dominating impression

of limitless repetition. Everything is of solid salt, except where

some insecure roof is supported by huge timbers or a wooden bridge is

thrown over some vast chasm. As depth is attained the air grows drier

and purer, and the points and faces of the rock become more crystalline

and beautiful. Onward and downward still, through labyrinths of shafts,

galleries, and chambers, up crooked passages, and under vaulted

archways, that lead into innumerable, unnamed smaller apartments.

[Illustration: WIELIEZKA SALT MINES, GALICIA. THE BEAUTIFUL FRANCIS

JOSEPH BALL ROOM, MADE OF SALT. THE CHANDELIERS ARE MADE OF POLISHED

SALT CRYSTALS]

Groups and gangs of miners, naked to the hips, are everywhere busy

with pick, mallet, and wedge, with which they block out and separate

the salt slabs from the solid mass. The process has the simplicity

of the age in which it was first employed. The blocks are marked out

on the surface of the rock by grooves. One side is then deepened to

the required thickness, and the face is split off by wedges inserted

under the block. It is then divided into pieces of 100 lb. each and

removed to the shafts, where it is hoisted, stage after stage, to the

surface. The number of labourers continually engaged is from one to

two thousand. The miners, who are muscular, healthy-looking men, are

divided into gangs. The work is carried on in shifts of six hours each,

and in each shift a gang will quarry out about 1,000 lb. weight of salt.

The Letow ball-room, which lies at a depth of 216 ft. below the

surface, dates from 1750, and has been the scene of many Royal visits

and splendid entertainments. One end of the spacious chamber is adorned

with a colossal Austrian eagle, and in an alcove at the opposite end

is set up a crystal throne. The giant chamber which bears the name of

Michalowice, a fearsome and stupendous excavation, was completed in

1701, as the result of forty years of continuous labour. It is 59 ft.

long by 92 ft. broad, and the roof, supported by a wooden framework,

has a height of 118 ft. The chamber is lit by a salt chandelier

furnished with 300 electric bulbs. The Francis Joseph ball-room is

another of the wonders of this subterranean city. It is an immensely

large and immensely lofty apartment, lit by six large chandeliers

fashioned of crystalline rock-salt. Salt statues of Vulcan and

Neptune, which adorn the hall, reflect the electric light from myriad

brilliant points and angles, and contribute to the general impression

of flashing splendour which the scene conveys. Beneath these great

reception rooms, are smaller halls, each beautiful in itself, bearing

the names of royal or princely personages. Massive pyramids of salt and

sculptured monuments, with carved inscriptions, perpetuate the memories

of Emperors and Empresses of Austria, or commemorate their visits to

the mines. Near to the Letow ball-room is the celebrated St. Anthony’s

Chapel, which was hewn in 1698, and for upwards of two centuries has

been the resort of thousands of the devout. The vestibule in the

chapel consists of a symmetrical archway with figures at the sides. The

interior is beautified by an altar bearing a sculptured representation

of the Crucifixion, and flanked by salt effigies of kneeling monks.

Hard by St. Anthony’s Chapel a magnificent shrine is hewn in one of

the passages, peopled with figured saints, which leads to the Queen’s

Chapel, with the superbly-chiselled altar and its view of Bethlehem

carved in the solid salt.

The central railway station in the third storey, and the great

restaurant, with its ponderous pillars and its long vista of latticed

galleries, are among the many marvels of the mines, but nothing it

contains is so wonderful as the subterranean lake, lying 700 ft. below

the surface of the earth. The waters of the lake are dark, thick, and

heavy, and as the boat glides over its surface the slumberous wavelets

roll up against the sides of the grotto with a ghost-like swish. A

ponderous solitude over weighs all. The Styx alone of all the legendary

rivers of death could rival this in stillness. The boat is guided

through the Stephanie and Rudolf grottoes by ropes running on pulleys

along the sides of the curious craft, and the boatman, with his hands

resting on the stern, pushes it with his feet braced against the rope.

Of the sixteen lakes in different parts of the mine, this is the only

one upon which visitors are allowed to go. The report of a gun fired in

the centre of the lake fills the vault with long and lingering echoes,

and the voice of the boatman sounds like a giant’s voice uprising from

the depths of chaos.

The illumination of the mine is arranged according to a regular tariff

based on the number of visitors sharing the expense. For any number

of persons up to twenty, the illumination, which comprehends the

employment of over a thousand candles and electric lamps, costs about

ninety shillings, but for an additional sovereign, which is charged

when a party numbers over thirty persons, the whole mine becomes a

blaze of light.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SALT MINE AT SLANICU, RUMANIA

This famous mine has been worked since the time of the Romans.]

Serious calamities at Wieliczka are now practically unknown, owing

to the care exercised by the officials, but minor accidents are

unavoidable. Some few years ago a huge mass of rock-salt, weighing

some 200 tons, fell from the roof of one of the chambers; in 1868 the

mines were flooded by the bursting of a subterranean salt lake; and a

fire in 1815 resulted in the loss of several hundred lives. The early

history of the mines contains the record of several terrible disasters,

including an incendiary fire in 1510, which caused a great number of

deaths, and another fire in 1644, which raged for over a year, and

consumed all the people, horses, and mules who were in the mine when

the fire occurred.

The working of the three great Rumanian salt deposits present other

examples of the persistent survival of ancient methods, but it must

be admitted that an attempt was made at one time to introduce modern

machinery. It was demonstrated that the machine produced more salt in

a given time, and that the waste of about 25 per cent. of the salt

attendant upon manual labour and the use of picks was saved, but as

the supply of salt is practically inexhaustible, and there is no

limit set upon the time of winning it, and as man-power, especially

convict man-power, is cheaper than machinery, the authorities soon

reverted to the old system. In the Slanic mine, in which the salt is

crystalline, white, and almost absolutely pure, the free labourers, of

whom about 500 are employed, are divided into gangs of six men. Each

man takes an oblong piece of the floor of the mine, about as big as

an ordinary tombstone, and, using his pick, scoops round it a narrow

groove about 5 in. deep. This done, he summons the rest of his gang,

and, standing beside him on the slab, they raise and bring down their

picks simultaneously at the word of command. Force is necessary, but

rhythmical accuracy in the planting of the blow is more essential, and

by long practice the men have become so extraordinarily expert that

they scarcely ever diverge a hair’s breadth from the point at which

they aim. In a few minutes the persistent blows detach the slab, which

the six men raise with the aid of a lever. The gang proceed from slab

to slab until all six have been detached and lifted, after which each

man breaks his own slab into chunks and loads it into a truck for

removal to the shaft, through which it is hauled to the surface. An

expert miner’s earnings at this work range from half a crown to three

shillings a day.

The convicts employed in the Tirgu-Ocna and Ocnele-Mari mines are

paid from sixpence to eightpence a day for their work, and, save that

liberty and the hospitality of the local taverns are denied them,

their condition is little worse than that of the free labourers. As

capital punishment does not obtain in Rumania, the convict miners

include murderers, brigands, and the worst class of criminals, and

armed soldiers escort them to and fro between the prison and the mine,

and remain on guard while they are at work. Dashes for liberty used to

be common, and organized attempts to escape have also been attempted,

but now, on the first sign of suspicious behaviour on the part of the

convicts, the order is given for the whole gang to throw themselves

flat upon the ground. As those who disobey the order are immediately

shot, instantaneous compliance with the command is usually observed. On

one occasion a body of disaffected convicts had recourse to a form of

passive resistance, and when the day’s work was over they refused to

leave the mine. The guards and overseers thereupon withdrew and left

the mutineers to reflect in an intolerably salt atmosphere upon the

virtues of fresh water, of which they had no supply. After two days

of torture, the men capitulated. But the work of superintending the

convicts in the mines is a delicate and dangerous task. The overseers

are compelled to mix with the men, and it is but the work of a few

silent minutes for a gang to overpower an unpopular official and

squeeze the breath out of his body. As the murder is a communal affair,

and the practice of making an example of one man _pour l’encourager les

autres_ is not adopted in Rumania, the extent of punishment inflicted

upon the whole gang is less than would be meted out to individual

offenders. As the salt reserves in the three principal mines of Rumania

are estimated at 8,774,000,000 tons, and the annual extraction has

never exceeded 150,000 tons, it follows that, at the present rate of

progress, the deposits cannot be exhausted for several millenniums.

Where the salt deposits are composed of a mineral that is white,

odourless, and practically pure, as in the Wieliezka system and the

mines of Rumania, and particularly if labour is abundant and cheap, and

the industry is a monopoly of the State, rock-salt mining will always

hold its own.

[Illustration: WIELIEZKA SALT MINES, GALICIA. THE RAILWAY STATION ON

THE THIRD LEVEL]

Even in this country, when the old open-pan system of evaporating

salt from brine produced only two tons of salt for the consumption of

a ton of fuel, rock-salt could be raised, purified, and marketed in

competition with white salt, but the modern boiling processes have

effected such substantial improvements and consequent economical

advantages, that the rock-salt industry appears to be doomed to

decay. Rock-salt, as quarried from its native bed, is found in many

variations of colour, from grey and yellow to green and brick red,

according to the nature of the impurities of the locality in which

the deposit lies, and such salt must be cleansed from all traces of

iron, clay, gypsum, or bitumen before it is fit for domestic use. Many

processes have been experimented with for the removal of impurities.

One of the most plausible methods was based on the fact that salt fuses

at a temperature of about 1,750 degrees, and the theory was to remove

all impurities from the fluid mass by the agency of compressed air. The

principle was unsuccessfully experimented with in Würtemberg nearly

half a century ago, but a modern adaptation of the process claimed

to be more successful. The molten material, in this case, ran into

rotating pans and gradually overflowed; and it was then shovelled into

another receptacle and, while subjected to the action of compressed

air, raised by small buckets to a certain height and emptied into

inclined screens, through which it was automatically graded. It was

claimed that from the time of casting the crude material into the

furnace, until the perfect white salt appeared, the process occupied

only fifteen minutes, and that rock-salt could be broken in the mine,

transported, fused, and packed ready for table use in less than two

hours.

At the time when the master-patent for this process was taken out, the

latest brine-evaporating systems were unperfected, and there was some

possibility that the invention might be capable of taking the rock-salt

direct from the mine, eliminating at one stroke all its impurities,

and in the course of an hour or two delivering into the warehouse an

anhydrous salt “at a fraction of the cost of the ordinary process”

of evaporating salt from brine. But by the time that this bold claim

was put forward on behalf of the process, the admitted total cost of

production had been advanced from 4s. to 5s. 8d. per ton, while the

latest patent brine-evaporating system was producing the manufactured

article at a total inclusive cost of 3s. 6d. per ton. Since then, this

rock process was installed in Mexico, persevered with for a while, and

finally discarded because, in the words of Mr. W. L. Bonney, the United

States Consul, “the experiment proved a failure.” Even if the latest

brine process has not “relegated rock-salt mining into the limbo of

extinct enterprises,” it appears certain that it will never be able to

be worked in competition with the process by which salt is manufactured

direct from brine where brine is available.

CHAPTER III

THE CHESHIRE WICHES

If we turn from the study of salt as one of the staples of world

industry to the history of the salt industry in England, we find

that it is practically comprised in the records of the development

of the trade in rock-salt and brine in the county of Cheshire. The

first documentary reference to the existence of saline deposits

in this country, as well as the earliest mention of the method of

native manufacture and of the introduction of the open-pan system of

salt-making, dates from the time of the Roman occupation. The Caesarean

soldiers, who penetrated as far north as the Northwich district, found

the people obtaining salt by the process of pouring brine upon faggots

of charcoal and scraping away the resultant crystalline formation. A

little spring which existed at that period in Sheath Street, Northwich,

furnished the Romans with a limited supply of brine, and from this

source, with the crude plant improvised on the spot, they produced the

first salt ever manufactured in England by the boiling of brine in open

pans.

The Britons named the brine spring at Nantwich “Hellath Wen,” or the

White Pit, on account of the whiteness of the salt produced from its

waters; while the spring at Northwich received the name of “Hellath

Du,” or the Black Pit. The suffix “wich” may have been introduced into

Cheshire direct from the Vikings of the North, or brought there by

way of the south-eastern counties. In Camden’s _Britannia_ (published

in Latin in 1607, and translated by Philemon Holland, 1610), we read

that the word Wiccij “may seeme to have beene derived of those _salt

pittes_ that the old Englishmen in their language named _Wiches_,”

and William Smith, a Cheshire Man and author of a work which is known

as King’s _Vale Royal_ (1656 edition), says: “The house in which the

salt is boiled is called the Wychhouse; whence may be guessed what

_wych_ signifies, and why all those towns where there are salt-springs

or salt made are called by the name of _wych_, viz., _Namptwych_,

_Northwych_, _Middlewych_, _Droitwych_.” But the Norse word _wig_ and

the Anglo-Saxon _wic_ signified, in the original, a dwelling-place,

and in the latter form of _wich_, it is seen in the names of Woolwich,

Norwich, Harwich, Sandwich, etc. The Norse and Danish pirates

who visited our coasts to pillage and procure salt, established

_wigs_--afterwards wiches or hamlets--on the bays and inlets, and

wherever they located themselves they proceeded to make bay-salt. The

word _wich_, in course of time, became identified not with the village

but with the salt manufacture that was carried on there, and when the

Cheshire towns developed the industry they may easily have adopted the

nomenclature that was already regarded as indicative of the manufacture.

In the records of Droitwich, which was also called Durt-wich “by reason

of the wettish ground on which it stands,” we learn that in the year

816, Kenulph, King of the Mercians, gave Hamilton and ten houses in

Wich together with their salt-furnaces, to the church of Worcester,

and that in 906 the same church was endowed by Edwy, King of England,

with Fepstone and five salt-furnaces; but the next earliest references

to the Cheshire Wiches must be searched for among the entries in

Domesday Book, which was prepared between 1084 and 1086. William the

Conqueror’s authorized inquiry as to the several places in which salt

was being made, and the persons who had held proprietorial rights in

them since the time of Edward the Confessor, was productive of much

detailed information. From the zincograph reproduction of the original

made by Mr. William Beaumont in 1863, it would appear that the Cheshire

brine-springs and salt works were strictly held, and were subject to

certain well-defined customs. In several localities the existence of

solitary salt-houses is mentioned, and it would seem safe to infer

that the supply of brine was obtained in the vicinity and the salt was

only made for local consumption. Salt-making for commercial purposes

was confined to Nantwich, in Warmundestron Hundred, and Northwich and

Middlewich in the Hundred of Mildestvic, and, although no figures

relating to output or revenues are given, the laws governing the trade,

the prices charged, and the method of dividing the moneys accruing from

rents and sales are concisely set forth in the following paragraphs--

“Mildestvic hundred. Hugh and William held of the Earl Rode Godric and

Ravesa held it for two manors and were free men.”

“In the same hundred of Mildestvic there was a third Wich called

Norwich (Northwich), which was in farm at eight pounds. In it there

were the same laws and customs as in the other Wiches, and the King

and the Earl divided the receipts in the like manner. All the thanes

who held salt-houses in this Wich gave no Friday’s boilings of salt

the year through. Whoever brought a cart, with two or more oxen, from

another shire, gave 4 pence for the toll. A man from the same shire

gave for his cart 2 pence within the third night after his return home.

If he allowed the third night to pass, he was fined 40 shillings. A man

from another shire paid 1 penny for a horse load. But a man from the

same shire paid 1 styca within the third night after his return, as

aforesaid. A man living in the same hundred, if he carted salt about

through the same county to sell, gave a penny for every cart, for as

many times as he loaded it. If he carried salt on a horse to sell,

he gave 1 penny at Martinmas. Whoso did not pay it at that time was

fined 40 shillings. All the other customs in the Wiches are the same.

This manor was waste when Earl Hugh received it. It is now worth 35

shillings.”

“_Nantwich._--In King Edward’s time there was a Wich in Warmundestron

hundred, in which there was a well for making salt, and between the

King and Earl Edwin there were 8 salt-houses, so divided that of all

their issues and rents the King had two parts and the Earl the third.

But besides these, the Earl had one salt-house adjoining his manor of

Acatone (Acton) which was his own. From this salt-house the Earl had

sufficient salt for his house throughout the year. But if he sold any

from thence, the King had twopence, and the Earl a third penny, for the

toll. In the same Wich many men from the country had salt-houses, of

which this was the custom--

“From our Lord’s Ascension to Martinmas, anyone having a salt-house

might carry home salt for his own house. But if he sold any of it

either there, or elsewhere in the county of Chester, he paid toll

to the King and the Earl. Whoever after Martinmas carried away salt

from any salt-house except the Earl’s, under his custom aforesaid,

paid toll, whether the salt was his own or purchased. These aforesaid

8 salt-houses of the King and the Earl, in every week that salt was

boiled or they were used on a Friday, rendered 16 boilings of salt, of

which 15 made a horse-load. From our Lord’s Ascension to Martinmas,

the salt-houses of the other men did not give these Friday’s boilings.

But from Martinmas to our Lord’s Ascension, these boilings were given

according to custom, as from the salt-houses of the King and the

Earl. All these salt-houses, both of the lord and other people, were

surrounded on one part by a certain river, and on the other part by

a ditch. Whosoever committed a forfeiture within these bounds, might

make amends, either by the payment of 2 shillings, or by 30 boilings

of salt, except in the case of homicide, or of a theft, for which the

thief was adjudged to die. These last, if done here, were dealt with

as in the rest of the shire. If out of the prescribed circuit of the

salt-houses, any person within the county withheld the toll, and was

convicted thereof, he brought it back and was fined 40 shillings, if

a free man; or if not free, 4 shillings. But if he carried the toll

into another shire, where it was demanded the fine was the same. In

King Edward’s time, this Wich, with all pleas in the same hundred,

rendered 21 pounds in farm. When Earl Hugh received it, except only one

salt-house, it was waste. William Maldebeng now holds of the Earl the

same Wich, with all the customs thereto belonging, and all the same

hundred, which is rated at 40 shillings, of which 30 shillings are put

on the land of the said William, and 10 shillings on the land of the

Bishop, and the lands of Richard and Gilbert which they have in the

same hundred, and the Wich is let to farm at 10 pounds.”

“_Middlewich._--In Mildestvich hundred there is another Wich between

the King and the Earl. There, however, the salt-houses were not the

lord’s, but they had the same laws and customs that have been mentioned

in the above-mentioned Wich, and the customs were divided between the

King and the Earl in the same manner. This Wich was let to farm for 8

pounds and the hundred wherein it was, for 40 shillings. The King had

two parts, and the Earl the third. When Earl Hugh received it, it was

waste. The Earl now holds it, and it is let to farm for 25 shillings,

and two wain-loads of salt. But the hundred is worth 40 shillings. From

these two Wiches, whoever carried away bought salt in a wain drawn by

four oxen or more, paid 4d. for the toll; but if by two oxen, 2 pence

if the salt were two horse-loads. A man from another hundred gave 2d.

for a horse-load. But a man of the same hundred gave only a halfpenny

for a horse-load. Whoever loaded his wain so that the axle broke within

a league of either Wich, gave 2 shillings to the King’s or the Earl’s

officers, if he were overtaken within the league. In like manner,

he who loaded his horse, so as to break its back, gave 2 shillings

if overtaken within the league, but nothing if overtaken beyond it.

Whoever made two horse-loads of salt out of one, was fined 40 shillings

if the officers overtook him. If he was not found, nothing was to be

exacted from any other. Men on foot from another hundred buying salt,

paid 2d. for eight men’s loads. Men of the same hundred paid 1d. for

the same number of such loads.”

The first private record relating to salt appears in the foundation

deed of Combermere Abbey, dated 1132, in which Hugh Malbane, the

founder, caused it to be written: “And I also grant to the same monks

the fourth part of the town of Wych, and tythe of my salt and of the

salt pits that are mine, and salt of Blessed Mary the Virgin, and salt

on Friday, and salt for the Abbot’s table as freely as I have it at my

table.”

Ancient Deeds in the Record Office contain occasional reference to salt

properties in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries which show that

salt was made in limited quantities in Cambridgeshire and at Rye,

Mimera, and Brembre (formerly Hayerskys), in the County of Sussex.

Protests against the importation of salt from abroad, and of

salt-making by foreigners contrary to the liberties and ancient

customs of the borough of Northwich, are recorded in the Harleian

MSS. In response to a complaint made on behalf of the burgesses and

inhabitants of Northwich concerning the mischievous irregularities

committed in the making of salt by “p’sons forrayne and not inhabiting

w/thin the Sḍ towne,” King Henry VIII issued an Order to the Justice

and Chamberlaine of the County Palatine of Chester to the effect:

“_WHEREFORE_ we will and command you that in any case such forrayne

p’son or p’sons not inhabiting within the s/^d towne, do, or hereafter

at any time shall attempt to use makeing of salt contrary to the

lib/^{er}ties and ancient customes of the same within the same towne

without lycence of the burgess and the rulers thereof. _THAT_ then

without delay ye and ether of you from tyme to tyme upon complaynt

or of the rulers and govnors of the same towne do send for all and

every such forrayne p’sons as do or hereafter shall attempt to make

any salt within the s/^d towne of Northwich contrary to the libties

and ancient customes of the same, without the assent and agreem/^t of

the s/^d Burgess and ruler by o/^r writts of subp: to appear before

you in o/ Castle of Chester at there appearance to punish and reforme

them: And also further to order them as right and good conscience shall

require according to the lawes and customes heretobefore used now in

other wyches there abts w/^{th}in o/^r s/^d County Palatyne, for the

reformacon of such transgressions fayle ye not hereof as ye maye intend

to please us.”

In the time of the Tudors, the salt-makers of Cheshire were composed

of natives and “forrayners,” or residents born outside the boundaries

of the county, and in the Northwich Book of Orders is given a list

of ten “outliers” in the town of Northwich who occupied between them

no fewer than eighty-nine salt pans or leads. Although we have no

information as to the exact size and capacity of the evaporating pans

of the period, it is evident that they were made to a regulation scale,

and we read that it was the business of an officer of the Court Leet

to examine the leads and see that they conformed with the standard

dimensions. If the prescribed measurements were exceeded, the official

cut a piece out of the corner of the pan with a pair of shears with

which he was furnished for the purpose, so as to reduce its capacity to

the legal limit.

Only three of these old salt-pans have been recovered, and, of these,

one was cut up and sold as old lead. One which was drawn out of the

river at Northwich in 1866 was forwarded by the River Weaver Trustees

to the Warrington Exhibition, and was transferred subsequently to the

Northwich Museum. This pan measures 3 ft. 8 in. long on one side, and

3 ft. 4½ in. on the other; it has a width of 2 ft. 8 in., and is 4 in.

deep. The thickness of the lead is about half an inch. and the weight

of the pan is 2 cwt., 1 qr. 18 lb. There are raised patterns on each

end of the pan, which was evidently cast, and the sides are rounded up

from the bottom. In 1878, in the vicinity of Ashton’s Salt Works at

Witton, was found a smaller pan made out of a sheet of lead 2 ft. 8

in. square. The sheet was bent up to form a pan and the corners were

hammered together. This lead is 25 in. square by 3 in. in depth, and

has a capacity of about 7 gallons.

In the early years of the reign of James I we have particulars of the

salt districts in Camden’s _Britannia_, and in a letter received in

February, 1605, from Chomley written by one George Johnson. Camden

explains that the Cheshire _Wiches_ were so-called because “there

bee here very notable _salt pits_ and many salt springs often-time

have been found which notwithstanding are stopped up, because it was

provided (as wee read) that for the saving of woods, salt should not be

boiled but in certain places.”

[Illustration: SUBSIDENCE NEAR THE DANE BRIDGE, NORTHWICH]

Meagre as these accounts are in exact particulars, they constitute the

only information we have concerning the supply and treatment of brine

in England in the early days of the industry, and, consequently, they

invite attention. Camden is responsible for the following details--

“At _Northwich_ there is a deep and plentiful brine pit with stairs

about it, by which, when they have drawn the water in their leathern

buckets, they ascend, half naked, to their troughs and fill them, from

whence it is conveyed to the wich-houses about which there stand on

every side many stakes and piles of wood.

“_Nantwich._--There is but one salt pit here (they call it the brine

pit) distant about 14 ft. from the river. From this brine pit they

convey water by wooden troughs into the houses adjoining, where there

stand ready little barrels, fixed in the ground, which they fill with

that water; and at the notice of a bell, they presently make a fire

under their leads, whereof they have six in every house for boiling the

water. These are attended by ‘Wallers’--a name probably derived from

the Anglo-Saxon _weallere_, a boiler; German, _wallen_, to boil--who

with little wooden rakes, draw the salt out of the bottom of them and

put it in baskets, out of which the liquor runs, but the salt remains

and settles....

“The depth of the salt springs is in some places not above three or

four yards. In Nantwich the pit is full 7 yards (deep) from the

footing about the pit: which is guessed to be the natural height of

the ground, though the bank be 6 foot higher, accidentally raised by

rubbish of long making salt or “walling,” as they call it. In two

places within our Township, the spring breaks up so in the meadows as

to fret away not only the grass, but part of the earth, which lies

like a breach at least half a foot or more lower than the turf of the

meadow: and hath a salt liquid ousing (oozing) as it were out of the

meed but very gently.

“_Droitwich_ possesses three fountaines yielding plenty of water to

make salt of, divided asunder by a little brooke of fresh water passing

betweene, by a peculiar gift of nature spring out: out of which most

pure white salt is boiled for six months every yeare, to wit, from

Midsommer to Midwinter, in many set fornaces round about: wherewith a

mighty deal of wood is consumed, _Fakenham Forest_ (where trees grew

sometime thicker), and the woods round about, if men hold their peace,

will by their thinness, make manifest more and more....”

Of the two wells of salt-water at _Middlewich_, which are separated

by a small brook, we are only told that “one stands not open but at

certain set times, because folke willingly steale the watere thereof,

as being of great vertue and efficacie.”

More informative on essential points is the unknown correspondent of

George Johnson, who writes as follows--

“_Namptwich._

“There is in the town of Namptwich two hundred and sixteen

salt-houses of six leads apeece, and every of the said houses

doth spend in wood per annum eight pounds so as there is spent

in wood yearly within the said town in omnibus annis.... £1728

“_Middlewich._

“There is, in the said town, one hundred and seven salt houses

of six leads apeece, and one of four leads and every of the

said houses doth spend yearly in wood the sum of £13. 6. 8, so

as there is spent every year within the said town, £1435. 4. 0.

“_Northwich._

“The said Northwich is a Burrow and holden of the Earle of

Chester by the service of twelve armed men to serve at the

Watergate in Chester in the time of wars betwixt England and

Wales. There is, in the same towne or Burrow, one hundred and

thirteen salt houses, every one containing four leads apeece,

and one odd lead and one four leads which was given to the Earl

of Derby by the Burgesses, occupiers of the said Town, for the

portion of his house, and no land in the Town for it, and every

four leads must have in provision of wood, nine quarters and so

rateable, whether it be four leads or six leads, so that there

is spent in wood in the said town 1026 quarters and a peece

after the rate of five score to the hundred and after the rate

of forty shillings per Quarter comes to £2056. 10. Spent in the

wich houses yearly in wood, £5219. 14.”

The particulars which are given of the salt manufacture in the Wiches

in 1605 and 1607 by George Johnson’s correspondent and by Camden, are

repeated with only the slightest variation half a century later in

King’s _Vale Royal_. But in the latter account we are able to glean

a little more information about the towns themselves. Concerning

Northwich, we are told that it had the mischance to be burnt in July,

Anno 1438, and was “most part miserably consumed with fire,” in

December, 1583. “But through the Benevolence gathered throughout the

Realm, it is new builded, and is in as good case or rather better than

before.” The town in 1656 was divided into two parts, one of which

was called the Cross, while a “very fair church of stone,” called

Northwich Church, stood “without the Town’s-end.” But although it was

called Northwich Church, we are told that it was only a chapel and its

proper name was Witton; a combination of coincidences which caused

the chronicler to conclude “that the town was named first Northwich,

after the finding of the salt.” Of Nantwich, we are only informed that

the town was visited in 1617 by the gracious King’s Most Excellent

Majestie, who, with his own eyes beheld the manner of the brine well

and the labours of the drawers of brine--who, in the course of their

work, “spend the coldest day in frost and snow, without any clothing

more than a shirt with great cheerfulnesse”--and “with his own hand

most princely rewarded them.” Middlewich is described by the same

authority as no market town: “yet may it pass amongst them, as well for

the bigness thereof, as also it hath Burgesses and other privileges,

as the other wiches have, yet it hath a small market of flesh and

other things every Saturday, and yearly two fairs: that is to say on

Ascension Day and St. Luke’s Day. It hath divers streets and lanes,

as King Street, Kinderton Street, Wich House Street, Lewis Street,

Wheelock Street: Pepper Lane: Cow Lane and Dog Lane. But the chiefest

place of all is a broad place in the middest of the Town, in manner of

a market place, called the King’s Mexon.”

A large accumulation of matter of great local and antiquarian interest

is to be found in the Northwich Book of Orders, the Court Rolls, and

the Walling Booke of Northwich, which consist of documents and records

relating to the government of the town and the regulation of its salt

industry about the middle of the seventeenth century. The “Ancient

Customes of the Burrow and Town of Northwich,” the inventory of “The

Liberties and Priviledges of Burgesses,” and the Orders “concerning the

making of salt,” were collected and set down by Peter Warburton, of

Chester, Esquire, Steward of Northwich, and afterwards a Justice of the

Court of Common Pleas at Westminster. At a Court held on 18th December,

1608, this compilation, “so full of interest and instruction,” was

ratified and confirmed by Thomas Berrington, Gentleman, Steward of the

said Court, and a jury of Burgesses, and Thomas Poole, Gentleman, Clerk

of the said Court, was instructed to write them into a Booke “to the

end the same may remain upon record to future ages.”

The Nine Customes, numbered 10 to 18, which were written in 1638,

were supplemented in 1641 by other Nine Customes, numbered 1 to 9,

which had been “heretofore omitted merely through forgetfulness.” Of

the eighty-four Orders relating to salt-making which appear in these

records, the first sixty-one were agreed upon by “The Steward and

Jury at Diverse Courts” up to 1629, the seven following were added in

1630, and seven more appeared on the rolls before Master Poole made a

fair copy of the Orders in 1638. In the following year eight further

regulations were issued. Order No. 84 bears the date of December, 1656,

and only three subsequent unnumbered enactments were included up to

1666, when the record comes to an end.

Although these old Orders (1629–1666) include directions relating to

the general behaviour of the townspeople, injunctions concerning the

sales of liquor and butchers’ meat, the malpractices of begging at

men’s doors, piking or stealing wood, “scoulding or chideing ... to

the trouble or disquietness of the good and honest neighbours,” and

rules for the maintenance of cleanliness in the streets and public

places and the publication and preservation of Proclamations put forth

by the King, the bulk of the laws are framed in the interests of the

staple industry of the district. No detail connected with salt-making,

from the drawing of the brine to the transport of the manufactured

product, is left to chance or the discretion of the individual. The

rights and privileges of Burgesses, and particularly of such as occupy

salt-houses or wallings, are set forth in the Ancient Customes, but

in all particulars relating to the making of salt, the Orders are

paramount and precise. Space does not permit of the reproduction here

of the whole of the regulations, but a few of the Items may be quoted

as evidence of the care and thoroughness with which they were framed.

“7. Item. It is ordered that no man shall enter into the Lead-looker’s

book any more walling or occupation for one Wich-house than six leads

walling upon paine for every offence ... 10s.”

“15. Item. That if any Person or Persons receive into their Houses

any Wood by Night or by day by the way of Exchange for Candles, Meat

or Drink every such Person as well the Changer as the Receiver shall

pay fine to the Lord for every default 5s. or to be punished by the

Steward.”

“17. Item. That every Waller shall sell the salt she maketh by the

Walme or Cranock and not by the sack or load, and at the price which

the officers sett down to be the com’on price of the Towne upon pains

for every default 3s. and also to make up the full price to her Mr.

upon her wages.”

“18. Item. That no Waller nor no other Person shall make any fire in

the Wich-house streets in the night time, and every such offence to

be presented by the Bailiffe at any single Court and punished by the

Steward according to his discretion.”

“22. Item. That no person shall deliver any bryne to be carryed out

of this Towne either in Hodge heads or Barrels (except upon Woemen’s

heads) upon paine to forfeit to the Lord for every such offence ...

20s.”

“24. Item. That there should be left at every pile made at the end of

any Wich-house or Wood roome a yard and a halfe between the said pile

and the Crest of the Pavement to the intent that waynes may have better

passage upon paine of 6s. 8d. presentable at any single Court.”

“26. Item. It is ordered that no Person from henceforth shall be

suffered to wall or occupy any Odd Lead as 3, 5 or 7, but 2, 4 or 6

Leads for avoiding of trouble to the officers except in such case as

cannot be remedied upon paine of ... 10s.”

“27. Item. It is ordered that henceforth no Person shall occupie

Walling unless they first continue a householder for the space of three

years and after such time expired to be allowed by the Steward or his

Deputy, and the Lead-lookers (except he be a Burgess) upon paine to

forfeit for every lead ... 13s. 4d.”

“33. Item. That all Inhabitants and Occupiers of the Towne do aide and

assist lawfully every Officer of the Towne in Executing their office

lawfully upon paine every one that offendeth to pay for every offence

... 10s.”

“40. Item. It is ordered that if any Waller be found making of Course

Salt when they might make it better if they would, the Lead-lookers or

Salt-viewers so finding them and making presentment thereof e’ry such

Waller so offending shall fine to yr Lord for e’ry offence therein ...

2d.”

“43. Item. We do also order that every Occupiers’ Leads of this town

shall henceforth be made Tenn stone weight a peece to the pan before

they be cast, upon paine of the Lead-casters forfeiture to the Lord of

this Towne for every default in casting any Leads contrary to this

order the sum of ... 10s.”

“63. Item. It is also ordered that every occupier of Walling or his

Waller, or his Serv^{ts} shall weekly make cleane ye pavem^t ag^t their

Wich-Houses one yard and a half from the middle of the pavement upon

paine to forfeit for every such offence ... 12d.”

Duly set forth in these records are the forms of oaths to be

administered by the Court to those who “shall well and truly execute

the office” of Constable, Lead-looker, Overseer, Salt-viewer, Assessor,

Killer of Salt, Market Looker, Sealer and Searcher of Leather,

Ale-Taster; Skavinger, Gutter Viewer, Wood Tender, or Pan Cutter. Each

of these important officers in the prescribed form must “swear by the

holy Contents of this Booke,” to “spare no man for any love, favour or

affection” in the fulfilment of his several duties but “of all Defaults

and Defects that you find in the execution of yo^r office you shall

present at every Single Court to be holden after such Default made--So

help you God.”

The compiler of _Vale Royal_ (1656) does not admit that he is indebted

to the Northwich Book of Orders for his information, but he alludes in

general terms to the “authentique rules and customes” which regulate

the manner of making salt in the Cheshire wiches, and adds: “All these

things I leave to be read other where, knowing well their jealous love

to be such towards this their beloved commodity as I should soon incur

some reprehension for being too busie to look narrowly upon such a

beauty.”

[Illustration: DUNKIRK SUBSIDENCE, NEAR NORTHWICH]

In “A Copie of The Walling booke of Northw^{ch},” amongst the Harleian

MSS., the earliest list of occupiers of wich-houses with the number of

leads, together with the names of such persons as had wich-houses of

Inheritance in the town, with their number of leads, was compiled in

1565, and gives a total of “five score and thirteene Salt houses and

one lead.” A list of owners and of salt-houses arranged in the form of

a street directory was drawn up in 1593, and, about 1600, a revised

list, compiled in accordance with the location of the houses, and

giving the number of leads in each, was supplemented by a street plan

of the town. In the list of 1589 it is recorded that--

“Our Soveraigne lady the queene hath two salt-houses of free

occupa’ion, and toulfree wth all and one is Judger of Cogshall.”

In the list of 1604, the King appears as the owner of two salt-houses,

and it is assumable that His Majesty acquired an additional half

of a salt-house in the following year, since, in the more detailed

compilation drawn up in 1605, we read that--

“Our Soveraigne Lord the Kings Maj^{ty} hath two Salt-house and

a halfe which be both towle free and ffine free and is Judger

of Cockshall.”

The King’s name as the owner of “2½ towle free and fine free”

salt-houses heads the list for 1619 and that for 1636–1638. This last

contains the names of forty-six lords and owners of salt-houses, having

an aggregate of over 400 leads.

It was the custom to repeat the legend either at the beginning or the

end of each succeeding list that--

“There is and tyme out of mynd hath been within the Towne of

Northwich 112 four leads and one odde lead and noe more; and

four leads called the Running Wich-house. Soe the totall is 113

four leads and one odde lead.”

This formula was evidently only a fable. The discrepancy between the

figures and the statement was pointed out by a scribe in 1630, who,

having cast up the number of leads tabulated in the list of 1589,

appended the following note: “These leads answere but unto 308 leads

whereas there is 453 leads yearly walled for ut pateat ante: soe that

there wanted 145 leads to make up the full accoumpt for 308 leads and

145 leads make but just 453.”

There are about 450 leads accounted for in the next list, which was

drawn up in 1593, but the clerk persisted in the assumption that what

had been “time out of mynd” could suffer no change, and he formally

declared, despite his own figures to the contrary, that “the totall

some is 113 four leads and one odde lead, which stand in the Towne rowe

as is before written and declared.”

On folio 61 of one of the Harleian MSS., following the list of

Northwich salt-owners for the years 1636–38, are undated lists

of salt-owners of Middlewich and Nantwich. The clerk admits the

incompleteness of the list of twenty-two owners in Middlewich, but he

explains that the names he gives are “as manie as I can learne for the

p’sent,” and he adds, “But the number of their sev’all and respective

howses and leads I cannot learne.” Only five owners appear in the

returns for Nantwich, and the meagre particulars that the clerk has

been able to acquire respecting the other salt districts of Cheshire

are contained in the following note: “There is another Wiche where

there is a great store of Salt made in Cheshire And w^{ch} is of greate

Antiquitie called Fulwich, also Durtwich, and my Lo: Brereton is an

owner of sev’all wich-houses theire. But whoe are owners of the rest I

cannot learne.”

Nantwich was long famous among the Wiches for its production of the

finest and best white salt. The Welsh named it Hellath Wen, and

the _London Magazine_, in 1750, translated the words as the “White

Salt Town,” but there is no reference to the quality or colour of

its output in the present name, which is derived from the Welsh

word “nant,” a vale, and the Saxon “wyche.” That its salt was good,

plentiful, and of considerable commercial value would seem to be shown

by the fact that under the Saxons the supplies were in the hands of the

princes and nobles, and William the Conqueror had not been in England

more than a year before he divided the salt production of Nantwich

between himself and Earl Edwin, who owned some salt-houses in the

district.

According to Leland, there were 400 salt works at Nantwich in the reign

of Henry VIII, but the number was reduced to 216 under Elizabeth, and

in 1624 only 108 were in existence. Nantwich was described in the

_London Magazine_ of 1750 as the largest and most considerable town in

the county next to Chester, but its salt industry at that period was

fast declining. An Act of Parliament which had been obtained in 1734 to

extend the navigation of the river Weaver from Winsford to Nantwich,

was never put into operation. In 1778 the salt works had been reduced

to two, each containing five large pans of wrought iron. The Nantwich

salt industry was practically moribund in 1849, but some twenty-five

tons per week were produced by one maker until 1856, which is the

last year in which salt was made in the district. In 1891 a company

was registered for the purpose of acquiring property in Nantwich and

manufacturing salt from brine, but the necessary financial support

was not forthcoming and the project was abandoned. The decline of the

Nantwich salt industry is ascribed in Poole’s _History of Cheshire_

(1778) to various causes, including the frequent destruction by fire

of the works in the town--“fourteen of which in the memory of persons

living lately, having been destroyed in one day”; to the discovery and

exploitation of new salt springs in adjacent localities; and to the

superior advantages in the matter of accessibility which were possessed

by Northwich and Winsford.

Northwich, described by the Welsh as Hellath-du, became the chief of

the Cheshire salt towns in the seventeenth century, and its output

of brine is still greater than that of any other district. In 1605,

Northwich had 449 leads, against 642 leads at Middlewich and 1,296

leads at Nantwich, but the comparative superiority of the brine pumped

at Nantwich over that of her rivals is demonstrated by the relative

amount of boiling required to precipitate the salt. In Northwich, the

annual expenditure for wood fuel was £2,056; Middlewich, with nearly

one-third more leads, consumed wood fuel to the amount of £1,435

yearly; while Nantwich, working twice as many leads as Middlewich, and

nearly three times the number operated at Northwich, had an annual wood

bill of only £1,728.

In 1670, Winsford, which had only just started as a salt producer,

had two salt works in operation on a small scale. In 1675, Lord

Brereton ignored the output of Winsford in his calculation of the

total annual salt production of the Cheshire works at 26,927 tons.

In 1878, or practically two centuries later, the Cheshire output of

salt was calculated at 2,055,000 tons, made up as follows: Winsford

and District, 1,036,000 tons; Northwich and District, 880,000 tons;

Middlewich and District, 21,000 tons; and the newly-developed Sandbach

District, 118,000 tons. But while Winsford has surpassed her older

competitors in the matter of salt production, Northwich is still the

commercial centre of the industry and the greatest producer of brine;

whereas, in the case of the other districts, the brine is converted

into salt on the spot, the Northwich brine, to the amount of hundreds

of millions of gallons annually, is pumped out of the neighbourhood

through the Marbury pipe, to be employed in the chemical works of

Brunner, Mond & Co., and be manufactured into salt at the Salt Union’s

works at Weston Point.

Compared with the other salt-making centres, the record of Middlewich

is of slight importance, and although the ancient town boasts an

honourable place in the history of the Cheshire Wiches, it now takes a

secondary position among the salt-producing districts.

Lawton, in the south-eastern corner of the Cheshire salt region, is

a comparatively modern entrant into the local industry, for although

the place is of historic importance as the scene of the discovery of

the bottom bed of salt in 1779, white salt has only been manufactured

there for something over 130 years. The deposits, which are found at

a considerable height above sea-level, are of great but undefined

magnitude, as the lowest strata has been bored through for a thickness

of 72 feet, without penetrating the formation. The rock salt here

was acknowledged to be purer than any previously encountered in

Cheshire, and the brine derived therefrom, containing 26·100 chloride

sodium by weight, yields on evaporation an exceptionally high class

of white salt. The Commercial Salt Company, Ltd., which was formed

to work the Hodgkinson Patent Salt-making Process, to which further

reference must be made later, have their works at Lawton, where they

are most conveniently situated in the important matters of transport

and fuel, being on the canal which brings them nearer to the markets

of the Midland Counties than any other salt works in the country, and

obtaining their coal from workings within two miles of the property.

The rock salt formation is so vast that the supply of brine, if not

actually inexhaustible, will allow of an enormous production of salt

for many generations to come. The output of white salt at Lawton for

nearly a century and a half has not appreciably depleted the deposits

and is not at present being drawn upon, as the Commercial Salt Company

are pumping from an excellent “brine run” which is pumped without the

damage to property and subsidence of land that have occurred in other

parts of the Cheshire salt districts.

The chronicle of the salt industry of Winsford is one of the romances

of commerce. Until the river Weaver was made navigable, the Winsford

salt manufacture was limited to the output of only four pans of

unrecorded dimensions, which were probably worked by Middlewich makers.

In 1758, the first year in which the Winsford shippings were recorded

separately, the export of white salt was 1,055 tons. By the end of the

century, Winsford sent 44,384 tons down the river Weaver, and, in the

year 1850, their shipments had increased to 324,249 tons. This output

had risen in 1880 to 794,824 tons of white salt. In the ensuing ten

years there was a slight increase, followed by a sharp decline (in

1890) to 501,548 tons, or a fall from the high-water mark of 834,306

tons in 1881, of no less than 332,758 tons. The decline in the Winsford

make of salt was not arrested by the formation of the Salt Union in

1888, and ten years later the output of white salt had decreased to

403,455 tons, and the export of rock-salt from Winsford, which had

recommenced with an output of 141 tons in 1856 and risen to 28,236 tons

in 1886, ceased in 1898.