Nantwich Salt Works
About
Nantwich sat on one of Britain's richest natural brine springs, and Roman engineers moved fast, building fresh salt works on open ground rather than reusing the Iron Age pits nearby. Excavations at Kingsley Fields uncovered two large timber-lined evaporation tanks and basket-lined pits, preserved almost intact in waterlogged Cheshire clay. The town's name, from Old English for 'salt town', outlived the empire by a thousand years. Lead pans here boiled brine down into blocks light enough to cart across the province.
What happened here
Shallow pans are cut into the flats behind a beach or a lagoon and filled at high tide through a gate. The water is walked through a sequence of pans, each shallower and saltier than the last, and the sun does the rest over the summer. In late season the crust is raked into ridges, left to drain, then carried off in baskets. The work is hot, glaring and hard on the feet, and it is done by contracted labour on a short season. Salt preserves fish and meat, cures hides and pays part of the state's revenue, so the pans are regulated and often leased from the state. A salina needs sun, wind and a tide, and it shuts down entirely when it rains.
Sources
- BAR Publishing, 'Roman Nantwich: A Salt-Making Settlement'
- academia.edu, 'Brine in Britannia: Recent Archaeological Work on the Roman Salt Industry in Cheshire'
Nearby
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