LION SALT MUSEUM, CHESHIRE

A visit to the Lion Salt Museum at Marston near Northwich, Cheshire took three years to accomplish. A 2013 planned visit while I was staying with my cousin Jean in Congleton did not materialise as I had not checked their website beforehand. If I had I would have found that the works was closed for restoration. With a re-opening date of Summer 2014 planned by Cheshire Museums a second chance to visit the works was penciled in, but the restoration with the aid of a very large Heritage Fund grant took longer than planned & the opening took place in June 2015. 

So in August 2015 on a glorious summers day, cousin Jean & myself spent most of the day at the Salt Museum.

This old advert on a rusting brine tank for visiting the Works can be seen from the canal which runs alongside the Works. The Trent & Mersey Canal was used to transport the finished salt products both locally & to Liverpool, from where it was exported to Canada, North America & West Africa. The coming to the railways & then road transport superseded the canal as a more profitable & viable way of transporting the salt. 

If you follow in our footsteps & visit the Museum I highly recommend that you take up the option of the excellent free guided tour (if still available) as this informative but not too in-depth tour made it a more pleasurable visit. I have to note that there is a charge to go around the Museum, but the guided tour by local volunteers was free.

The guided tour starts at the reception with an introduction to the beginnings of the Works & how the salt was extracted from the ground below. This was follow by the tour of the buildings with each of the processes explained along the way. 

The salt brine was pumped by steam engine from underground salt streams via a bore hole & then stored in storage tanks before it was transferred to the pans via a network of pipes.  

In the Pan House coloured lights & dry ice are used to re-create the steam filled atmosphere of the men at work collecting the salt from the pan. The brine was brought to the boil thus creating the scene above, but conditions the men had to endure was not a pleasant one, hot & a constant taste of salt on their lips & in their nostrils.

One of the many pans in the process of being restored.

The salt was collected, put into moulds creating salt blocks. Then it was stored in the lofts before cutting & packing.

After the tour we revisited parts of the works to spend more time reading the story boards. This was followed by a walk along the towpath of the canal viewing the buildings & saying hello to the people on the many pleasure craft which now go up & down the canal.

This arial view of the works possibly 1970's/80's (with the look of the cars) is a very large black & white print on one of the walls in the final section of the museum. 

This re-creation of the Works office is in the main museum building & in this section there is a display board showing the Thompson Family Tree. It was John Thompson senior who started the family salt business in 1842. Joiner by trade John was also a timber merchant & brick yard owner. John initially traded salt & shipped salt in partnership with other salt merchants. He then sank his first salt mine & opened his first salt works in 1843. In 1846 John was joined by his sons John junior & Jabez in the business opening several more salt works over the next forty years. After John seniors death in 1867 the company was divided between the two brothers with Jabez running the Alliance Salt Works. In the 1880's Jabez then turned to brickmaking & this venture was a very successful one. The Alliance Works was then run by John junior's son Alfred until it's sale to the Salt Union in 1888. Meanwhile after John seniors death, John junior continued to run the rest of the families salt works & it was in 1894 together with his son Henry Ingram Thompson that the Lion Works was opened next to Red Lion Hotel on Ollershaw Lane. This new works was only a short distance from the Alliance Works. By the time the Lion Salt Works had closed in 1986 it had been run by six generations of the Thompson family.

These first two bricks made by Jabez are displayed next to the family tree board & the third one stamped Ornamental Brickworks was found during archaeological excavations & this photo was supplied to me by Chris Hewitson, archaeologist at the museum. Jabez owned two brickworks in Northwich one on Manchester Road & one on Warrington Road which now has Aldi built upon it. 

Many Thanks to Chris Hewitson for providing the brick photo & information for this post was collated from the Lion Salt Museum's guide book & Wikipedia. Also many thanks to our very excellent tour guide Mike.