Our main scheduled activity today is to visit the new Lion Salt Works Museum at Marston. Apart from that, we have to find somewhere overnight as close to Anderton Marina as possible. We are booked in for the morning for our engine and gearbox service.
We were just south of Northwich last night and there are few signs on our maps and guides for shops other than just after casting off, at Broken Cross. Indeed, just as we pulled in to moor at bridge 183 we saw a small sign pointing to a garage for grocery and newspapers! Fortunately they did have a couple of what we wanted left available, even at this relatively early hour!
The canal skirts around Northwich to the East with the River Weaver on the western side. Instead of housing and commerce, the canal is edged with numerous chemical works, mostly based around the historical salt production which has been here in one from or another for many centuries, if not back to Roman times.
The largest works was labelled as Brunner Mond when we were here four years ago, before that it was ICI. Now it seems to be part of the ever-growing Tata empire. There was less sign of life this time so we wonder what may be happening to it. Later investigation suggests that Tata have may be closing both this and the Winnington plant (downstream from the Anderton Lift). What we have found is that Brunner Mond became part of ICI ages ago but was sold to Tata in 2006. Another local boater later told us that the site is to be developed as housing.
The last works before we reached Lion Salt Works belongs to Trouw Nutrition who, as far as we can discover, make chemicals to improve animal productivity, especially for treating the crops grown to feed them.
We moored up at Lion Salt Works so that we could take a visit. In the past this has looked a very derelict site although we knew that there had long been hopes of keeping it as a museum telling the story of salt production. As we bought our tickets we discovered that it had only opened in June this year and has so far had over 4000 visitors. It was busy but not crowded - they could certainly cope with plenty more people at a time than today.
The museum is very well laid out with lots of informative displays. We learnt that there were essentially two different production methods used here - open, outdoor pans and heated indoor one. The former produced a coarser, heavier salt which was especially valued for fishing as its density meant that it not only took up less room but also kept fish fresh for longer. The indoor pans produced fine and common salt, much of the latter being used in the production of other chemicals. (Subsequently, the mushrooming demand for such products led to the construction of much larger plants)
This site was run by several generations of the Thomson family who eventually gave up in 1986. Just a little later, the Adelaide works, just across the canal, collapsed and created a huge 'flash' ie lagoon. At that site they had extracted salt by mining whilst the Lion Works used brine pumping. Until modern times, miners were much less restricted in how they left pillars to prop up the surface and occasional collapses produced huge holes. In 1861, a compensation scheme was introduced but this did not stop the subsidence.
One photo shows when the canal itself collapsed in 1907. The amazing fact was that workers repaired it and it re-opened in two weeks. Doubt whether even the fish rescue would have happened in that time today!
One of the old pans was so badly damaged and demolished but the splendid new visitor centre, tickets and cafe, is meant to conjure an image of what it looked like. However, as the information boards say several times, the industrial buildings were not meant to last - hopefully the new one will fare better!
Two displays brought back memories for Mike: he recalls as a small child in Bodmin having the task of crushing blocks of salt like these and he was also amused to see a Brunsviga machine in the re-constructed manager's office. Mike learnt to do multiplication and division on such a machine back in 1962.
The indoor pans were heated underneath by coal fires and the heat distributed via flues to other parts of the building to dry out the blocks of salt once removed from the pan. Work here was very hot and the steam at times meant that workers could hardly see where they were going.
Another pan, showing what happened to the base if not continually maintained. The smithy nearby was kept constantly at work keeping back the ravages of the caustic contents.
This shot shows the amount of heavy engineering work that has had to be done to restore the building safe enough to allow visitors to walk through.
The better salt was cast into elm boxes and dried into these blocks. Other salt was ground to a fine powder in a crushing machine, originally steam powered by eventually driven by an electric motor.
For reasons that were not clear, the Lion Salt Works specialised in exporting quality salt to east Africa, much of it via Nigeria. Hence it was branded Lagos salt.
It seems that, despite some efforts to introduce new methods, the production of salt in this way was overtaken by other developments and the portrayal of the business in the exhibition is of one that sadly fell very much behind in its business methods. Closure in 1986 seems inevitable but we reflected that we must have passed the works on the canal when it was still in operation.
By the time was had wandered around all of the exhibits it was lunch time and we returned to the boat for just that. The museum is excellent and we would happily recommend it both for adults and children.
Eventually we set off for the short run to Anderton. We called at the facilities block - as we have experienced before, a queue can build up, waiting for the water point - there are two but not very fast flowing. We also made contact with the engineer at Anderton Marina just to check where we should bring the boat in tomorrow morning.
We winded at Anderton Lift and were surprised that a boat was just leaving the 24 hour moorings by the visitor centre. Not much chance of a tv signal we think, but it would have been a long way back to be sure of that. As it is we are just a couple of minutes away from the marina.
5.0 mile - 0 locks
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