Hi all,
I come from what was (and still is) the UK's principal salt-making area - Mid-Cheshire. many of my fathers ancestors worked in the salt industry, and the associated chemical industry in Mid-Cheshire which used salt as a raw material.
General information: In the UK, towns which end in -WICH are usually associated with salt making or trading. Hence DroitWICH, and in Cheshire we have NorthWICH, MiddleWICH, and NantWICH. The Droitwich salt field ran down in the early part of last century, so I have relatives from Worcestershire who moved up to Cheshire to find work in their trade.
Salt-making: most salt in the UK is extracted by brine-pumping. In Cheshire there are two layers of rock salt. The top layer was extensively mined in Winsford, Middlewich and Northwich. These mines subsequently flooded and then brine was pumped out of the old workings. This "wild brining" as it was called caused a great deal of subsidence as the old mine workings collapsed.
Such working was outlawed about 100 years ago, and then all salt in Cheshire has been worked from the deeper layer. This is done by controlled brine pumping in most cases, where a bore hole is made into the salt layer and then water pumped down and brine back up. The process is stopped once a certain dimension of hollow has been excavated, and then a new well is made.
There does remain one rock salt mine in Cheshire, at Winsford. This is also in the bottom layer, and is the source of all that "grit" which is put onto the UK roads and rots our cars so well!!
Brine is turned into salt by the process of evaporation. Salt used to be boiled in big open vats or "pans", and the solidified salt cut into lumps and taken out. You used to be able to buy "lump salt" like that in the shops when I was a lad!
For more information and history on salt-making see some of these websites:
http://www.ncsw.co.uk/ for a present day salt-maker.
http://www.lionsaltworkstrust.co.uk/ - a preserved salt-works and good history source.
http://www.saltmuseum.org.uk/ the Northwich Salt museum
http://www.british-salt.co.uk/education/history.htm - more history from British Salt
The motto of Northwich on the Northwich Coat of Arms is "Sal est Vita". If you hated Latin at school, then you'll not know what that means!! But basically it means "Salt is life" - a double-play really because salt IS necessary for life, we can't function without it. And salt has been vital to Northwich and its inhabitants for many centuries.
Garry Brookes
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Topic: Salt Maker? (Read 9191 times)