The salt industry of Cheshire may be divided into three periods, viz.: the natural brine period, the rock-salt period, and the prepared brine period. From Saxon times up to the last quarter of the seventeenth century the manufacture of white salt from brine had been continued without interruption, but the output had never been large. In 1675 the production of the three “Wiches” was returned at 20,000 tons, and all the evidence shows that the total annual make had never exceeded 30,000 tons. In 1670, rock-salt was discovered in the county, and for the next hundred years, although brine continued to be worked, rock-salt mining was the chief producing industry. With the collapse of the mines, the salt proprietors turned once more to the brine supply, upon which Cheshire has since risen to its present commercial eminence as one of the great salt-making centres of the world.

In 1670, a rock of natural salt was discovered on the Marbury Estate, about one mile north of Northwich, by one John Jackson, of Halton, who was engaged at the time in “searching for coals on behalf of the Lord of the Soil (or Manor, I should say), William Marbury, of Marbury, Esquire.” The event was communicated to the Royal Society by Mr. Adam Martindale in a letter dated 12th December, 1670. He added that the liquid issuing from the rock was “a vigorous sharp brine beyond any of the springs made use of in our salt works,” and, being asked by the Royal Society to visit the place and send a further report, he subsequently wrote: “The rock of salt, by the relation of the workmen, is between 33 and 34 yards distant from the surface of the earth, about 30 whereof are already digged and they hope to be at the Flagg which covers the salt rock about three weeks hence.... That piece of natural salt which the instrument brought up (divers saw it, a pure ore) was as hard as alum and as pure.”

The records of the rock-salt mining period are singularly incomplete, inexact, and disappointing. It is not known for certain which was the first mine sunk after the discovery of the salt-bed in 1670. It may have been the one which is described as “very near to a small brook which drains Marbury Mere and joins the Witton Brook, near the Buttevant Bridge on the Marbury Estate.” Or it may have been another early mine which was situated “close to a small runnel or gutter which runs into this small brook near the Dairy House Farm but passes across the land of Mr. Lyons and over the old Marston mine.” If the curious inquirer is not yet satisfied with these conjectures, he is further informed that there is yet another subsidence of an old mine, “close to the Forge Lane or road leading to Budworth across the Fields, where the road branches off at the cottages and salt-works of Mr. Lyons’ property ... and this mine is probably the earliest sunk.”

But if little is known about the beginning of the salt-mining industry in Cheshire, there is not much more to be learnt about its development and ultimate decay. To-day, only the Adelaide Marston Mine at Northwich is working, and of the nineteen mines that were open in Cheshire in 1881, only nine were at work, while from an undated plan and key showing the rock-salt mines in the Northwich district, which was probably published a few years earlier, we learn that of the fifty rock-salt mines that had been abandoned, twelve had been sunk to the bottom bed and the rest had been worked as top-bed mines.

The story of the exploitation of the top and bottom beds is one that is soon told. The top bed was worked until the mines began to fall in and the subsequent breaking in of fresh water converted the old workings into brine reservoirs. In 1779, the discovery of the lower bed of rock-salt at Lawton prompted the owners of the Marston Mine at Northwich to sink below the top bed in which they were working, and, in 1781, a trial shaft which was sunk from the top mine by means of a horse gin, demonstrated the existence of the bottom deposit in that district. Other owners transferred their operations from the top to the bottom bed, and for the next fifty years practically all the rock-salt was excavated from that source. In 1830 the roofs in these workings began to crack, and attention was directed to the insufficiency of the pillars by which they were supported. A competent surveyor, who did not hesitate to declare that the workings were in a dangerously insecure condition, was regarded as an alarmist by the old salt proprietors, who commissioned other “experts” to examine the pits, and were satisfied with their assurance that they considered each pit to be entirely free from any danger, and that they should not hesitate to work in any of them. Three years later the roof of the first bottom-bed mine fell in, others collapsed in rapid succession, and by 1840 some twenty mines had collapsed, let in water, and become filled with brine. In 1881, only nine rock-salt mines were at work, and eight of these had a combined area of 123 acres.

Rock-salt mining in England is a dead industry, but it will be of interest to outline very briefly the methods that were employed in Cheshire during the comparatively short period of its existence. The old top-bed mines were operated, in the first place, with one shaft to each mine, and they were ventilated by means of an air-pipe and a fan. A horse gin was used for winding, but the winding-shaft in which the gin rope worked did not go into the rock-salt, but only to within a short distance of it, and it was out of this shaft, at a distance of 2 or 3 yds. from the bottom, that a side drift was driven. From this side drift a windlass pit was sunk into the rock-salt, and it was up this windlass pit that the rock-salt was drawn to the drift and thence taken to and up the gin shaft, the part of the gin shaft below the drift being used as a sump or lodgment for water. These top-bed workings did not usually extend more than 100 yds. from the shaft, but, as the number of the mines increased, the workings from adjoining shafts occasionally become connected. In this way one shaft became a downcast and the other an upcast, and the air-pipe and fan at each were able to be dispensed with. The thickness of rock-salt worked averaged from 30 to 36 ft., and pillars of natural rock-salt, usually about 5 yds. square, were left to support the roof and superincumbent strata.

Although the bottom-bed mines were worked upon the same plan, the inadequacy of the supports employed in the top-mines was rectified by an increase in the size of the supporting pillars and in the thickness of the rock-salt roof that was left between them. Steam engines with direct shafts to the bottoms of the mines were substituted for the horse-gins and windlasses, and improved methods were introduced for preventing water from breaking into the shafts. Two winding-shafts were sunk, placed about 10 to 15 yds. apart, and a pump-shaft was sunk to the depth to which the surface water penetrated. One of the earliest precautions taken in the rock-salt shafts, and afterwards in brine shafts when they came to be sunk through rock-salt, was to protect the sides from the ravages of fresh water. All the shafts were roofed over to keep out rain or snow, and the wood casing, which was originally used, was replaced, in 1845, by cast-iron tubings, similar in construction to those used in colliery shafts.

As soon as the miners had sunk the shaft to the depth of the sole or floor of the mine and had made an opening large enough for their purpose, they proceeded to blast off enough rock to form a chamber about 5 ft. high. This formed, they advanced by blasting off the rock-salt from the face of the seam. The salt was loaded into waggons, which ran along small railways to the mouth of the shaft. The men engaged in blasting the rock and squaring the walls and pillars (for these were left quite square and well hewn) were called miners ; those who loaded the trucks and conveyed them to the shaft were ferriers. They were a fine set of men, and their occupation, compared with coal-mining, was a very healthy one. The mines were of an equable temperature, and were sufficiently warm for the men to dispense with their shirts. Being lofty, the air was pure, except when excessive blasting was undertaken. The greatest number of men employed in one pair of shafts was about eighty, and the quantity of blasting powder used by that number in the course of a day averaged 1 cwt. Safety fuses were seldom used, the charge being fired by a straw filled with fine powder, which was lighted from a candle.

Many of the mines were of considerable size, and some of them increased at the rate of about an acre annually. The quantity of rock-salt mined was small compared with coal. No mine in the district yielded above 40,000 tons per annum.

Rock-salt is more free from danger than most kinds of mining; no explosions occur, for there are no deleterious gases, and accidents are rare. In a general way the rock-salt strata are remarkably free from carbonic acid gas, and in only one instance in Northwich, and twice at Meadow Bank, Winsford, does fire-damp appear to have been met with, and then only at pipe veins and in very small quantity. There are no falls of earth, as in coal mines, for the rock-salt is extremely tenacious, and the miners never undermine it but blast it, which is a much safer operation. The two great dangers to which rock-salt mining is exposed, though they rarely result in loss to human life, are the falling in of the mine bodily, or of the shafts and neighbouring earths, and the breaking in of brine either at the head of the top-rock shaft or from old mines, long disused, and full of brine.

Neither the name of the first mine that fell in, nor the date of its collapse, is recorded. We know that a mine in Witton fell in in 1750, and another to the north of the Northwich Town Bridge followed in 1759, and that many others collapsed before 1770. Lakes, or “flashes” as they are called locally, have formed over the larger of these sinkings, but the sites are more commonly marked by what are known as rock-pit holes, and large tracts of country are scored with these funnel-shaped indentations. There can be no doubt that a number of these old mines were worked with pillars that were too few and slender for the purpose, and these supports gradually weakened to their ultimate collapse under the pressure of the superincumbent earths. As the sinking did not take place evenly all over the mine, but most frequently occurred near the shafts and at the greatest distance from the sides of the cavity, the roof would curve down towards the sinking centre and the falling-in formed the V-shaped apertures on the surface which are described as rock-pit holes. But, while in a percentage of cases the collapse of the mine could be traced to the crashing of the pillars, the destruction of the majority of the mines was caused directly by the influx of water, although this water, having become saturated with salt, would, if undisturbed, cause no further havoc in the interior of the mine.

But the manufacture of white salt from brine, which was temporarily surpassed in importance by the rock-salt industry, was not discontinued, and a copious supply of brine flowing over the rock head of the upper bed, was tapped by shafts and pumped to the surface. When, about 1850, this supply showed signs of failing, attention was directed to the enormous reservoirs of brine in the old inundated mines, into which had drained a great quantity of the rock-head brine. The attempt to pump brine out of the abandoned workings was successful, and for some years an abundant supply was obtained. After 1870 the pumping operations caused further collapses, the land overlying the mines subsided, and lakes were formed which, at intervals, broke into the partially exhausted reservoirs, and, pouring through the top-rock workings into the mines in the bottom bed of salt, replenished the supply of brine. A great collapse which occurred in the Dunkirk district in 1880 let down the waters of Cranage Brook and the Wadebrook, together with a huge quantity from the river Weaver. The subsidence resulted in the formation of a large lake, which, following upon a later subsidence in the same area, suddenly disappeared into the earth and literally flooded all the underlying strata.

Surprise has frequently been expressed that in a salt country in which brine has been manufactured for over twenty centuries, the existence of the rock-salt deposits should only have been discovered in the last two hundred and fifty years, but it must be borne in mind that not only was the brine the best custodian of the secret of its own source, but that, when the problem of the supply had been solved, the danger of tapping and controlling it had still to be overcome. When the supply of brine in many of the springs was cut into, it proved so copious that the sinkers had to flee for their lives and to ascend the shaft among the brine. The fact that the depth at which the brine would be encountered was unknown, explained the inability to provide a safeguard against the sudden inrush of brine, but subsequent observation showed that when the workmen met with the “flag,” or bed of hard marlstone that existed above the top of the rock-salt in many districts, the brine might be expected to be found at high pressure. It was then the practice to case the shaft sides down to the flag to prevent the entrance of surface water, and either to blow through the flag with powder or pierce it with boring rods. At a later period, the shaft was sunk to the approximate point of encounter with the brine, and cased with iron cylinders, the bottom cylinder being furnished with an iron bottom pierced with two pipe holes. A column of pipes was erected in the cylinder, and a set of boring rods was let down each pipe, so that when the flag was bored through, the brine rose until it attained its level in the pipes, while by means of a tap attached to each pipe it was possible to stop the entry of the brine and to empty the shaft.

In the brine-shafts employed in the case of the old rock-salt mines, in which the brine was met with at a much higher pressure than in the rock-head brine-shafts, the tapping operation was attended with extraordinary difficulties. The brine in the old workings rose to a height corresponding with that attained by the brine found at the rock-head, and as it had to be tapped through a pillar near the bottom of the old workings, the pressure was proportionately higher. When the holeing was first effected into the brine in the old bottom-bed workings, the rush of the incoming brine was so strong that it passed through the two 5 in. bore holes and rose up a 4½ ft. shaft to a height of 67 yds. in eight minutes. The shaft for tapping this supply of brine was sunk in a pillar of rock-salt, and a drift, fitted with two 5 in. bore-holes, was worked through the intervening face and into the brine. When these bore-holes were knocked through, the brine entered with the report of a cannon, and the engineer and his assistant, leaving their tools behind them, leapt into the bucket and were hastily drawn up the shaft, closely pursued by the rising brine.

An improved process for tapping the brine, which entirely removed the danger attending the operation, was subsequently introduced. This was effected by boring the last part of the main bore-hole through a stuffing-box at the other end—an innovation which prevented brine from escaping during the boring. A drift, with the usual ⅝ in. bore-hole in advance, was driven 61 yds. into the barrier, until the small bore-hole showed that only 10 yds. remained between the face and the brine that was known to be present in the old workings. Into this remaining 10 yds. of barrier a hole 11 in. in diameter was bored until nearly through, and a closely-fitted pipe was inserted into the hole for a distance of 7 ft. The pipe was 10 ft. long, but at 7 ft. from the inner end was a disc 3 ft. in diameter to rest against the face of the drift, leaving the remaining 3 ft. of pipe in the drift. About midway between the disc and the outer end of the pipe, were placed two strong iron uprights, let into a trench cut 1 ft. deep in solid rock-salt in the roof and floor to secure the pipe against the pressure. These two uprights were placed close together at the top and bottom, but in the middle they were curved so as to form a circle for the pipe to pass between them. The face of the drift against which the disc had to rest, having been carefully dressed, and a disc of india-rubber covered with red lead having been placed between the iron disc and the dressed face of rock-salt, the iron disc was secured up tight against the face by means of six set screws. A stop-valve was then fitted to the outer end of the pipe, and to this, for the temporary purpose only of completing the bore-hole, was attached an end piece with a stuffing box and a hole in it large enough for the bore rod to be worked through. The bore rock was then withdrawn and, the valve being closed, the stuffing box and the temporary end piece were removed. A range of pipes was attached to the stop-valve and, in this range, the brine was taken through the old workings and up one of the shafts to the surface.

Many geologists have subscribed to the theory that the Cheshire meres were formed by subsidences which occurred in pre-historic times, but the evidence based on the phenomena attending the modern subsidences proves that the latter were the result of artificial and readily-identified causes. Leland, in 1533, reports a sinking near Combermere and the formation of a pit containing salt-water; in 1657 a small sinking occurred at Bickley, near Malpas; and a third took place in 1713 at Weaver Hall, to the south of Winsford. No traces of any of these subsidences now remain, but, from the descriptions handed down to us, these sinkings belonged to the class of funnel-shaped holes and were of limited diameter and no great depth.

Of the modern subsidences, which are of three kinds, we have no documentary evidence prior to 1777, and the earliest distinct record belongs to the year 1790. From that time to the present day this class of sinking has continued to increase in extent year by year. In 1790 the sinking portion along the Witton Brook was recorded as being 130 yds. long by 90 yds. wide. In 1837, the subsidence had obtained an area of 1,230 yds. long by 130 yds. wide. In 1811, about 20 statute acres in Witton commenced sinking, and in the ensuing thirty-three years some portions of this area had sunk 24 ft. In 1880, the piece of water called the Top of the Brook had subsided over an area of 4,370 ft. by 1,470 ft., and in the same year it was estimated that no less than 2,700 acres of land in Northwich and Winsford were inundated.

These modern subsidences usually consist of funnel-shaped holes caused by the falling-in of top-rock mines, and of trough-shaped hollows which cannot be connected with rock-salt mining, and are frequently found in places far removed from the localities of the old workings. Of two dozen subsidences, two are nearly four miles distant from the nearest old workings or from the brine shafts, fifteen are upwards of two miles, and only one is less than a mile from either a mine or a pumping station. The subsidences could not be caused by volcanic action or the shock of earthquakes, as nothing of the kind has occurred in the districts, and it is impossible to explain them by the action of natural brine springs running to waste in the brooks or rivers, because it is known that no such springs now exist, while evidence accumulated from all parts of the world confirms the conclusion that where brine springs escape into the streams, no subsidence has ever occurred. Yet it is evident in Cheshire that some subterranean denudation must be taking place which is removing portions of the lower strata and allowing the super-incumbent earths to sink into the excavations thus made. Many theories have been advanced to explain the phenomena, but even those people whose interests have caused them to seek for alternative causes must realize that it can only be attributed to the simple and most obvious agency.

When the number of brine pits was multiplied and the natural springs of a weak solution of salt decreased in volume, it was necessary to sink down to the rock-head brine, which was a highly-saturated solution consisting of one part salt to three parts water. When this supply is pumped up, its place is taken by fresh water, which, flowing over the rock-beds, takes up its quota of salt on its way to the pumping shafts, and is raised to the surface in the form of brine.

It is not the presence of water over the beds of salt or in the old salt workings which causes the damage, because when such water has taken up salt to the extent of a fourth of its bulk, it remains inactive and makes no further ravages upon the mineral earths with which it is in contact. But when the saturated brine is pumped up and its place is taken with a new supply of water which collects its tribute from the salt strata, and that water, in its turn, is raised, to be replaced by more, and when it is known that each 100 tons of water that traverses the salt-bed to the pumps carries away with it 25 tons of solid earth, the work of destruction that is continually going on is explained.

It may be convenient to explain at this point that the subsidences caused by this simple operation of removing rock-salt from the earth in the form of brine are divided into three classes, viz.—

1. Shallow troughs, with sides not terraced or broken up.

2. Very shallow depressions extending over considerable areas.

3. Deep troughs, much broken up, and with stepped or terraced sides.

With these three classes in mind, it is easy to follow the results of the action of the subterranean brine and associate the causes with the effects produced. At first the water flowed over the salt in irregular channels and reached the pumping centres by devious routes, but after a time it made defined courses for itself exactly as the rainfall carves out for itself channels on the surface of the earth. These underground streams of brine all gravitate towards the pumps, widening and deepening as the continually renewed water takes up its supply of salt. Where the earths overlying these brine “runs” are not too tenacious, they soon follow the hollow or trough formed on the surface of the salt bed, and a corresponding hollow or trough is formed on the surface of the ground. Where the hollow forms at an early stage, it rarely attains any considerable depth, for the sinking earths impede the course of the flowing brine stream and cause the fluid to spread and be diffused over a wider area. These subsidences are the shallow troughs, not stepped or terraced on the sides, and are best seen in streets and roads where the weight of the houses and the constant passage of traffic cause the earths to gradually follow the wasting surface of the salt. Where, at a considerable distance from the shafts, the water has not formed for itself a definite channel, it percolates over a wide area. The denudation in such cases is more generally spread, and a very extensive shallow trough or basin is formed. Again, where the pumping stations are close together, or in the same line, the various rivulets or streams of brine converge into one broad and deep channel, in which the denudation proceeds with great rapidity. The magnitude of these channels causes the super-incumbent ground to subside swiftly, forming deep troughs with stepped or terraced sides, where the earths have broken away in huge masses. Where the earth consists of strong marls and a kind of flagstone they are very tenacious and remain suspended for a considerable time over these deeper cavities. When they will bear no longer, a sudden fall occurs in one spot, and tens of thousands of tons of suspended earths fall into the trough below, forcing out the stream of brine at the weaker places and leaving a huge, crater-shaped hole on the surface, which fills with water.

In addition to the three classes of subsidences already mentioned, there is another which is the result of a combination of collapses of the surface earth caused by the rock-salt mining operations, and the denudation of subterranean strata caused by the pumping of brine. The pumping from the reservoirs formed by the flooding of the old mines does not empty these huge receptacles, as the place of the brine is continuously retaken by fresh water, which naturally gravitates to these centres and proceeds to dissolve and take up its quota of rock-salt. When a subsidence occurs on the site of these old workings it is of the most destructive nature, and as all the top-rock mines were in the neighbourhood of streams and brooks, the surface waters flow into the cavity until it is filled to the level of the earth and allows the streams to pursue their proper course. But as fast as the fresh water becomes saturated and is pumped to the surface, the overlying stream or brook lets in further supplies of fresh water to fill the vacuum, and the work of internal destruction is followed by further subsidences of the suspended earths.

The immense bodies of water in the neighbourhood of Northwich and Winsford, locally called “Flashes,” which cover a total area of many hundreds of acres, are the work of subsidences. The Flashes are not shallow swamps, but lakes varying in depth over many acres, from a few yards to 50 ft. The largest Flash, known as the Top of the Brook and resembling the letter L in shape, has a length in each arm of about half a mile, an average breadth of a quarter of a mile, and attains a depth of 150 ft. In an account of these subsidences, written in 1879, we read: “The whole of the surrounding district still sinks rapidly, and year by year the water covers more ground. The land subsides gradually here; but when we go a quarter of a mile to the north-east of the Top of the Brook, we come across a subsidence of a still more alarming character. Here the ground sinks bodily in immense masses to a great depth. A tiny brook or ditch that a child could skip across passed over flat fields some five years ago. Gradually the land began to sink, and cracks opened in the surface right across the course of the brook. The water went down the crevices. The land immediately sank more rapidly; huge cracks, wide enough for a man to slip down, formed, and very soon a district extending fully one thousand feet in length by as many in breadth, sank rapidly to a depth of forty or fifty feet in the centre, and was filled up to a certain height with water, which covered the hedges and trees. At times cracks opened in the bottom of this lake, and the whole of the water rushing rapidly below, caused still more extensive sinking.”

One of the most extraordinary subsidences, which was described in Chambers’s Journal, occurred in Dunkirk, on the outskirts of Northwich, in December, 1880. The earliest intimation of impending disturbance on an unusual scale was a rumbling subterranean noise, the violent bubbling of the water in all the surrounding pools, and the uprushing of air and foul gas through rifts which its passage tore in the ground. It was quickly discovered that Wincham Brook, a channel of water nearly 20 ft. in width, had broken into the earth about 1,000 ft. from its entrance into the Top of the Brook, and the uprush of air from the old mines, was caused by the force of the descending waters. A series of alarming, but comparatively small, subterranean displacements caused extensive rifts in the ground about Ashton Salt-works, and these were followed by a sudden explosion in a neighbouring pool, which ejected a geyser of mud and water some 30 ft. into the air. In the ruin that ensued, stacks of timber, an engine and boiler, a salt pan, and other material disappeared into the gaping earth, and a massive chimney stack, some 90 ft. high and 9 ft. square at the base, tilted towards the centre of subsidence and collapsed with a terrible crash. Scarcely had this subsidence ceased, says the writer in Chambers’s Journal, “when an enormous sinking of the whole of Ashton’s Old Rock Pit Hole and the surrounding land, for an area of over five hundred feet in diameter, took place, leaving two very deep holes. The land was riven and cracked all round, and fell in steps of two feet. Over ten thousand tons of water went down into the subterranean cavities. A huge brine cistern was riven in two, and the brine all lost; and two large brick kilns cut completely in halves, and the bricks scattered about. The whole surface of the Weaver and the Top of the Brook was lowered fully a foot over one hundred and sixty acres in about four hours; and if we add to this the whole of the water of the Wincham Brook for twelve hours, we shall find, on a careful computation, that not less than six hundred thousand tons of water rushed below.”

From the time of the “Great Subsidence,” as this event is described, the sinking has been continuous throughout the locality. In some places meadows have been converted into swamps, roads have sunk fully 30 ft. below their original level, and small brooks have become lakes of many acres in extent; sunken and distorted fences, roads, and streams are common objects of the country-side, the tenure of pastoral lands is precarious, and property is valueless for building purposes; and nothing but its inexhaustible reserves of brine saves the district from abandonment as a place accursed.

The shallow, gradual, almost imperceptible subsidences which occurred in the neighbourhood of the towns of Northwich and Winsford were at first infrequent and of comparative unimportance, but as time went on the damage to property increased so rapidly that, in 1860, the house-owners of Northwich combined in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain legal redress. By 1880, many parts of the towns were rendered unfit for habitation. In Northwich alone, nearly 400 houses and other property to the value of over £100,000 were more or less seriously affected, while water-mains, sewers, and gas-pipes were being continually repaired; houses were condemned, pulled down and rebuilt, and bridges had to be raised. The rents of many lots of property were absorbed in keeping them in repair, and in some districts property had been raised and rebuilt three times in eleven years. “The area of the mischief is extending yearly,” wrote Mr. Thomas Ward in 1881, “and a larger proportion of property is becoming affected, and more and more land is sinking beneath the water and increasing the area of the already existing extensive lakes. Very few, except those conversant with the district, have the slightest knowledge of the amount of suffering caused to property owners by this subsiding of the land.”

For over half a century the appearance of Northwich, with its undulating streets, its ramshackle, dilapidated houses, its fissured walls, and its system of shoring and bolting-up of property to postpone as long as possible its inevitable condemnation and demolition, has presented a tragico-comic spectacle. “If a stranger were to be set down some morning in the town of Northwich,” wrote a Times correspondent, “without any previous knowledge of its peculiarities, he would be struck with a startling and novel spectacle. He would see buildings of every sort, from the humble, two-storeyed cottage of the artisan to the solidly built church or chapel, standing many degrees out of the perpendicular, and suggestive, all of them, were it not for the props and iron stays with which they are secured, of some recent convulsion of nature. In main thoroughfares and back streets alike there are houses whose sloping floors and cracked walls would lend considerable colour to such an effort of the imagination. The inhabitants seem to take this tumble-down state of their dwellings quite as a matter of course. They have, in fact, to make the best of a condition of things from which there is absolutely no escape. The effects described are produced, not indeed by any sudden catastrophe, but by a slow, though equally effective process of subsidence, which may be detected in continuous operation over nearly the whole area of the Cheshire salt field, and which will continue to operate so long as the earth yields its vast stores of salt for human consumption.”

But although newspaper representatives could philosophize upon the matter-of-fact spirit in which the inhabitants of the salt towns faced existence in their tumble-down surroundings, and the salt proprietors desired that they should make the best of a condition of things from which they wished them to believe there was absolutely no amelioration or escape, a feeling of resentment was rapidly growing in the neighbourhood. The people of Northwich and Winsford were being pumped out of their houses and out of their lands, and the future held every promise of a continuation and extension of the damage. Lord Delamere, who, as an owner and letter of salt lands, benefited by the brine industry and suffered from the depredation it wrought, admitted the damage and the cause thereof. Indeed, nobody but the salt proprietors doubted that the pumpers were wholly responsible for the destruction, and most people recognized that their wrong-doing was twofold in character. Standing on the ancient assumption in law that everything beneath a man’s property belongs to the owner, the owners of property in the affected districts contended that they were not only being deprived of the rock-salt which legally belonged to them, but were further despoiled by having their land made worthless by the abstraction of the salt for which they received no payment. The justice of the protest was obvious, and it became a public question how far these operations, useful in themselves, but involving consequences of a disastrous nature, should be allowed to proceed. In December, 1880, the Daily News asked who was to compensate the sufferers, who had neither caused nor contributed to the disaster.

Following the failure of the property owners to obtain compensation from the salt proprietors for the damage attributable to the pumping operations, an application was made to the Trustees of the River Weaver to devote a portion of their surplus revenue for compensation purposes. The application was refused, and an appeal to Quarter Sessions failed. The evil was allowed to drag on until 1871, when the Board of Trade, in response to representations made to them by the Northwich Salt Chamber of Commerce, instructed Mr. Joseph Dickinson to report upon the salt districts of Cheshire. Mr. Dickinson, one of the most eminent Inspectors of Mines in the service of the Government, after a prolonged investigation, reported his conclusions that the subsidences and the resulting damages to property were caused by the pumping of brine, which constituted a public danger and inflicted heavy losses upon many persons totally unconnected with the salt industry. A further report by Colonel Cox, corroborating the conclusions arrived at by Mr. Dickinson, came before Parliament in 1879, and upon the recommendation of the Local Government Board, the local Boards decided to promote the Cheshire Salt Districts Compensation Bill, “to make provision for the assessment, levy, and application for compensation for damage by subsidence of land in the salt districts of the County of Cheshire, and for other purposes.”

The salt proprietors exerted every effort to frustrate the plans of the promoters of the Bill; they declared that a tax upon salt would cripple the trade and ruin the entire neighbourhood; they endeavoured to create local ill-feeling by insisting that the movement was an attempt of the property-owners to saddle the ratepayers with the expense of the proposed measure. Briefly stated, the case that the promoters were asked to make required them to prove (a) the subsidence in the salt district; (b) that the subsidence was caused by the pumping of brine for the manufacture of salt; (c) that the subsidence was of a most extensive and serious character, and affected the property of persons deriving no benefit either from the manufacture of salt in the form of compensation from the salt manufacturers for the salt extracted, or for damage done to the property by such abstraction; (d) that there was no legal remedy for the injury suffered; and, finally, (e) that the moneys required to adequately compensate for the injury done, if levied upon the manufacture of salt, would not injuriously affect the salt industry.

A copy of the Bill was lodged in December, 1880; it was read a first and second time on 21st January and 4th February, 1881, and referred to a Select Committee, which commenced sitting on 5th May, and on the 20th of the same month announced their unanimous opinion that the preamble of the Bill had not been proved. In the preamble of the Bill it was estimated that a contribution not exceeding threepence for every ton of salt in brine in the district covered by the Act would be sufficient to provide the required compensation. The opponents of the Bill declared that a compensation tax upon the salt trade would severely injure the industry and act as a restraint upon trade; they put forward expert witnesses to contend that if the brine—which they contended was produced by rainfall percolating through the superincumbent strata and reaching the salt—was not pumped out, it would run away to the sea, and the consequent subsidence of land and injury to property would not be arrested. The theory that brine, in quantity sufficient for the manufacture of 1,600,000 tons of salt per annum would, without pumping, have been carried away into the rivers by natural agency and deposited in the sea, was supported by such ingenious misstatement and misrepresentation, and the fictitious instances of brine springs overflowing and causing damage in other parts of the world were quoted with so much specious authority that they succeeded in wrecking the Bill.

After a further ten years of continued subsidences and attendant damage to public and private property, the Brine Pumping (Compensation for Subsidence) Bill was introduced in 1891, to authorize the formation of Compensation Districts and Boards, with power to levy a yearly rate not exceeding threepence per 1,000 gallons of brine pumped. Shortly after the passing of the Bill, the action of Northwich, which memorialized for the formation of the whole of the County of Cheshire into one district for purposes of compensation, led to an inquiry by the Local Government Board, as the result of which Middlewich and Sandbach were excluded. The Provisional Order uniting Northwich and Winsford in one area was opposed by Winsford, and a Select Committee of the House, in 1893, quashed the Provisional Order and made Northwich an independent compensation district.

The next great struggle in the salt district, known locally as the Battle of the Brine, arose out of the action of the Salt Union, which, in 1909, enlarged its works at Weston Point with the intention of manufacturing salt at that place from brine pumped at Marston, near Northwich, 11 miles distant. In pursuance of their policy of stalling off competition and safeguarding their monopoly, the Salt Union, in 1890, had successfully petitioned against the Bill that was promoted to obtain powers to convey brine from Cheshire to be made into salt at Widnes, in Lancashire, and at Middlewich they had obtained an injunction to restrain trade competitors from laying pipes under one of the streets of the town for the conveyance of brine from their own pumps to their own salt-pans. In 1766, 1833, and 1861, the Trent and Mersey Canal, the Grand Junction Railway, and the West Cheshire Railway, respectively, received authorizations from Parliament, but in each instance a clause was inserted prohibiting the several companies from conveying or permitting to be conveyed in or upon any part of their properties, any brine for the making of salt to any district beyond the district in which salt was then made. In 1884, when the London and North-Western Railway sought to gain the repeal of the brine clause in order to enable brine to be carried from one salt township to another adjoining, Parliament refused to sanction even such a limited modification of the prohibition. The logical objection which the salt districts opposed to the removal from the several pumping centres of the brine upon which the prosperity of the towns entirely depended, had thus consistently been upheld by Parliament, but in the face of these facts, and of their previous attitude on the subject, the Salt Union insisted upon their right to carry brine from Marston to Weston Point, and announced their intention to defend their position to the utmost of their power.

It must be explained that the Marbury Pipe Line had been laid in 1882 by the Mersey Salt & Brine Company, who carried it, by agreement, across lands belonging to private landowners and over a canal belonging to the North Stafford Railway. The railway made a formal protest, but an amicable settlement was ultimately reached by which the Mersey Salt Company agreed to pay the North Stafford Company £5 a year and to remove the pipe on receipt of a three months’ notice. The railway company appear to have persisted with their opposition in order to force an admission from the Mersey Company that they possessed no permanent right to carry the pipe across their canal, but the concern was of such trifling importance that it was practically ignored by the people of the district, and for twenty years after the property of the Mersey Salt Company and the Marbury Brine Pipe had been acquired by the Salt Union, the question of the removal of brine from the neighbourhood in which it was raised had found all classes of the salt community united against such proposals. But with the completion of the works at Weston Point, and the enlargement of the Marbury Pipe and the installation of powerful engines, capable of driving millions of gallons of brine from Marbury to be converted into salt at the sea-board, a new menace was organized against which the Urban Authorities and Local Councils made a long and spirited, if fruitless, resistance.

In the autumn of 1910, the North Stafford Railway served the Salt Union with a notice to remove their pipe line from the Trent and Mersey Canal by the end of the following March, and the Salt Union proving obdurate, the towns of Northwich, Winsford, and Middlewich promoted the Brine Pumping (Cheshire) Bill, “to regulate the conveyance of brine pumped, raised and gotten” in the county. The original draft, which proposed to permit the removal of brine by pipe to a distance of three miles within the county from the place at which it was raised, was amended to permit manufacturers to carry brine by pipe from one set of works to another in their own occupation, and they further attempted to meet the alleged rights of the Salt Union by the insertion of a clause allowing the Marbury Pipe to be used for the conveyance of brine to the extent of 250 million gallons a year. But the Salt Union declined all conciliatory overtures, and combated the Bill before the Select Committee on the grounds that it was a proposal to alter the common law of England and interfere with the sacred rights of property. The injury that was sought to be done, not only to the Salt Union but to the export trade of the country, was enlarged upon, and the Committee may have been impressed by the assurance that the Union, so far from intending to leave Winsford and Northwich, expected to do an even greater trade in those districts in the future than had been done there in the past. In the result, the Salt Union’s insistence upon the legality of a course of action which they had previously denounced and opposed as totally illegal, carried so much weight with the Select Committee, that they made an unsavoury meal of the Parliamentary decisions of 1766, 1833, 1861, 1890, 1891, and 1893, and announced that the Bill could not proceed.