Chapter I: 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