Salt and the salt industry

by Albert Frederick Calvert

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.

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.”