Irene Preston's Historical Writing
SHORT FEATURE ON CHESHIRE SALT
The salt pans were all hand fired with coal and about 1 ton of coal was
needed to make 2 tons of salt. The hot, wet crystals were scooped from
the pan using a skimmer or raked to the side and piled onto wooden
hurdles and later taken in barrows to load onto wagons or canal barges.
An 80 foot pan could make 10 tons of common salt per day. Salt crystals
cake together when damp and must be dried and kept dry if needed as a
free-running powder. It has always been convenient to make salt as lumps
by pressing wet crystals into moulds which would then be baked in the
sun or dried over a fire.
For many centuries Cheshire salt makers used conical wicker basket
moulds called barrows. Later most salt works were making lumps in
rectangular wooden tubs. This was called lumping and the man in charge
was called a lumper. When the lumps were dried the wooden tubs were
inverted to release the lumps which were then passed up to the warehouse
floor above through trap doors called a loft. The men were called
lofters. The lumps were later crushed between 3 pairs of toothed rollers
and the crushed salt directed to various hoppers built into the base of
the mill. Dairy and table salts were sieved through vibrating mesh
screens to give the required particle size. Factory-filled low bulk
density salt wasn't screened it was packed in a fine cotton sack and
placed inside a Hessian outer sack for protection. Many girls were
employed in packing the salt and sewing up the sacks.
Later greaseproof paper, cardboard and sealed tins were the best
materials available for domestic packs of dry powder salt but now sealed
plastic bags and blow-moulded containers are in use. Large amounts of
common salt and fishery salt were packed in barrels.
In 1888 over 90% of the salt firms merged and the Salt Union was formed.
The Lion Salt Works at Wincham remains as the only working example of a
process which has been a feature of Mid-Cheshire for at least 2000 years