From the
Prehistoric to the Thompsons
In a new part of the Lion Salt Works blogs we will look at the history,
processes and people of the Lion Salt Works and salt industry in Cheshire in
our in depth history guides. This will bring together historical reports and
the latest research where possible. The blogs will also try to explain the
different buildings and processes at the Lion Salt Works in the easy …How to … guides.
Roman and prehistoric salt-making
Salt-making in Cheshire dates back
over 2000 years and is prehistoric in origin. The latest research by Janice
Kinory into prehistoric salt-making has highlighted Cheshire as an important
salt-making area from prior to the arrival of the Romans.
The salt towns of Cheshire were
first established by the Roman period at Northwich (Condate), Middlewich
(Salinae) and Nantwich. In 2002 excavation revealed the fullest evidence so far
recovered for the Roman settlement at Nantwich, a historic salt-producing
centre in Cheshire (north-western England), was revealed by an excavation
carried out at Kingsley Fields, on the west side of the town. Positioned along a Roman road was evidence for the collection and storage of brine and the production of
salt, together with buildings, enclosures, a well and a small number of
cremation burials. Waterlogged conditions meant that organic remains, including
structural timbers, were well preserved on the site. These included the two
finest examples of timber-built brine tanks excavated from Roman Britain. The
report on these excavations by Peter Arrowsmith and David Power has been
recently published (see below).
Medieval salt-making
By the Anglo-Saxon period the
towns had developed the –wich place
names by which they are described today. The Domesday Book of 1086 describes
the extent of the salt-works in the Cheshire region. Northwich was described as
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.
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| The Nantwich Salt Ship |
Production continued throughout
the medieval period. Perhaps the best archaeological find from this period was the Nantwich Salt Ship now on display at the Nantwich Museum. This huge hollowed out tree trunk is an amazing survival of the medieval salt industry in Nantwich. Known as a ‘salt ship’ it was found during excavations in 2003 and was used to store brine before it was heated in shallow lead pans to produce salt crystals. It survived due to waterlogged conditions preventing its decay. Evidence of medieval salt working in Nantwich survives well in the waterlogged ground and remains of timber buildings, salt ships and wooden barrels all show how important the salt industry was in the town.
In 1580, the great chronicler William Camden writing in his
Magna Brittanica describes the area;
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| Agricola - Woodcut of salt-making |
From thence runneth Wever down by Nantwich,
not far from Middlewich, and so to Northwich. These are very famous
Salt-Wiches, five or six miles distant, where brine or salt water is drawn out
of pits, which they pour not upon wood while it burneth as the ancient Gauls
and Germans were wont to do, but boil it over a fire to make salt thereof.
William Camden – Magna Brittanica 1580.
A wood-cut of the 17th century by Georgius Agricola shows the process in detail.
Open pan salt-making
The process of medieval salt-making
was almost identical to that undertaken at the Lion Salt Works. It relied on
heating brine over a fire, but the pans were much smaller and generally made of
lead not iron. The supply of brine at this time relied on natural springs or
brine pits;
" 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." (William Camden – Magna
Brittanica 1580).
The extent of salt-making in
Northwich was significant as suggested by a letter received by George Johnson
from Chomley, in February 1605; ‘The said
Northwich is a Burrow and holden of the Earle of Chester… There is, in the same
towne or Burrow, one hundred and thirteen salt houses, every one containing
four leads apiece...’.
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| William Brownrigg - small pans and furnace |
The pans were small and set in
groups of four with the heat drawn from the fires by a small chimney. William
Brownrigg writing in 1748 in his ‘Book of Common Salt’, shows a wood-cut of one of these salt-making pans.
By the later 18th
century the small pans of the medieval period had been replaced by much larger
iron pans in the Cheshire region. These were almost as large as the ones in the
Lion Salt Works. Christoph Chrysel writing in 1773 in his ‘Remarkable and very useful Information about the present Salt Works and
Salt pans in England’ notes a pan in Northwich;
The first pan is 36 feet long, 25 feet broad
and 13 inches deep and holds at one time 975 cubic feet of brine and has three
furnaces.
The second pan is 40 ft. long, 27 feet broad
and 13 inches deep, and holds at one time 1170 cubic feet of Brine and has 3
Fireplaces. Both these large pans are still to be seen in England on the
Baron's Quay Salt works near Northwich in Cheshire, where they are worked
weekly and were built more than 4 years since.
Christoph Chrysel developed an
improved system of salt-making for which he received a 14 year patent. He
describes a process not dissimilar to that used at the Lion Salt Works
suggesting it had reached its ultimate form by the 18th century. His
improvement to the process developed the furnace beneath the salt pans and
resulted in ‘the least Fire and Coal the
most Salt can be made and the greatest Profit received’. The two types of
salt normally produced are described below;
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| William Brownrigg - Outline of Furnace and salt pan |
" The fourth sort is Broad Salt, that is to say Coarse Salt, because
it has larger crystals than the foregoing salt. It is made more especially in
Cheshire in every salt works. The Brine from the Salt springs with a very
gentle and moderate fire, in large pans is heated for 24 hours when large hard
crystals are formed. It is drawn into Salt Tubs and allowed to remain on the
sides of the Pans for 8 or 9 hours then taken to the Storehouse and thrown into
a heap and allowed to lie until it is dry, which happens in a few days. I have
seen it sold in two or three days and taken away. The price of this Salt at the
works is 14 shillings per ton without the duty.
" The fifth sort is Fishery or Flakey or Shivery salt. The Brine
is heated with a very gentle fire for 36 hours for half a pan of brine or 72
hours for a full pan, when crystals of half an inch and ¾ inch cube are formed.
This is sold at 20 shillings per ton without the duty and is chiefly sent to
the Newfoundland Fishery without paying any duty, for all salt sold and shipped
out of England pays no duty. On the contrary all salt used in England must pay
a duty of Ten pounds per ton.
His description of salt made in
Cheshire would not have been unfamiliar to the Thompson’s in the 1960s. The
open pan salt works that developed around Northwich used unchanged 18th-century
technology but were generally larger in scale. Tom Lightfoot describing his
memories of the Middlewich and Winsford industries of the early 20th
century suggests large numbers of salt pans set side by side along the River
Weaver.
Further Reading
Janice Kinory 2012 Salt
Production, Distribution and Use in the British Iron Age, Archaeopress, BAR 559
Peter Arrowsmith and David Power 2012
Roman Nantwich: A Salt-Making Settlement
Excavations at Kingsley Fields in 2002, Archaeopress, BAR 557
Calvert, AK 1915 Salt in Cheshire
Brownrigg, William 1748 Book of Common Salt
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