Walking down the High Street we come to the bridge over the river. A few yards to the right along the new road Fairfax Way just off the pavement on the riverside is the ‘Old Biot’ or the site of the brine pit, centuries old.
There is a plaque on a stone which tells how this area was laid out in the 1990s as a gesture to recognise the significance of salt in the history of the town. We could say that Nantwich exists because of the discovery and exploitation of salt.
Some time in the distance past we think that a person - Roman or earlier man - must have noticed that a spring on the bank of the river was running salt water. How to get the salt from the brine by evaporation must have been known as common knowledge. Likewise the uses of salt in preservation, for taste and other purposes must have been understood.
The discovery attracted a few people to settle near the banks of the river and before long a business or trade evolved into the exchange, barter or sale of the salt for other commodities which the people needed. As may be learned at Middlewich, the Romans were in barracks and they also produced salt. A Roman road extended from Northwich, another salt town, to Whitchurch passing near to Nantwich at Reasehealth.
According to experts in the origin of names, the Roman word for a place which had some special significance, not necessarily salt but other activities, was vicus. We see at once how this suffix became vic, wic and wick found in the names of very many places. Popular misunderstanding has thought that wich must been salt.
In 2002 and 2003 first time excavations in land behind houses on the north side of Welsh Row have revealed many artefacts and evidence of extensive salt making activities. The full report is waited but it would seem to suggest that there was much more Roman presence in the town than had been thought.
The brine pit on Snow Hill was about 6m deep. Leather buckets were used to carry the brine to the places - salthouses - where it could be stored in barrels until required. The salthouse was a simple construction of a roof on six or more poles with lengths of wickerwork for low walls or other division of the workplace.
A lead pan, almost a metre square, was placed on stones. Wood was fed into the space below and lit. In this simple way the heat turned the water to steam and left the salt crystals behind. The moist salt was put into wicker ‘baskets’ to drain. Strict rules on how and when ’boilings’ could take place, inspection and control of sale were enforced.
Such was the importance of salt that it is easy to forecast the growth of a hamlet, a village and a small town as the beginning of today’s Nantwich. The industry grew and grew, until there was a time when there were 216 salthouses on both sides of the river, mostly in the area of First. Second and Cross Wood Streets off Welsh Row
