Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

WITH THE SALT WORKERS IN A CHESHIRE MINE. 333 timber is necessary. 1 he building is primarily a strong wooden framework, and the brick- work is filled in ; consequently, in case of sub- sidence, it is possible by means of a hydraulic jack to “ lift ” the house or shop, to tilt it this way or that, and make good the sunken ground beneath it, and, as it were, to place it steadily on its legs again. I he damage to and the repair of buildings is covered by a fund at the disposal of the Salt Compensa- tion Board, the money being raised by a tax on the brine pit proprietors. I he levy does not exceed threepence per 1,000 gallons pumped, and inasmuch as 1,000 gallons of brine yields one ton of salt, the compensation burden is not particularly heavy. The making of salt from brine is an old industry at Northwich. 1 he salt museum contains specimens of rock, common, table, cheese, and fishery salt from India, America, Europe, and Cheshire, and in it are also treasured two salt pans and a black wooden brine trough or cistern, which were in use before the seventeenth cen- tury. The salt was formerly evaporated in a “ wych- house,” and nearly all the towns engaged in salt pro- duction retain their name ter- mination of “ wich.” There has been little change in the brine industry for many centuries. The inventor has sought to economise labour by a trial of automatic brine pans, but the old method is generally continued, that of the evaporation by intense heat of the water from the brine pit or spring. Hand pumps, water wheels, horse power, and windmills have been utilised in pumping, but steam is the almost universal agent, and the shafts through which the brine is raised are, as in the rock-salt mining, cased with iron cylinders to keep the pit free from surface water, The brine after pumping is run into reservoirs, from which it flows by gravitation into the evaporating pans. In the Witton works at Northwich good quality coal slack is used for firing the furnaces that range beneath the vast salt pans. The wich house, or salt-making shed, is almost tropical with heat, and thick with ascending steam and vapour; but through the haze you can see the pans, brine-filled, their contents of salt and water boiling and bubbling in a ferment, the salt gradually settling to the bottom of the pans in masses white as snow. 1 he highest temperature and the least time in the pan produces the smallest grained or the finest salt, and the lesser heat and the longest period in the pan gives the largest grained or the coarsest salt. The finest is drawn frequently, otherwise the crystals would BRINE RUNNING INTO CISTERN.