260 Landslips and Sinhings in Cheshire. 



The salt deposits of the British Isles are nearly all in the New Eed 

 Sandstone district of Cheshire, Worcestershire, and Staffordshire, 

 which furnishes annually nearly one and three-quarter million tons 

 of salt. Salt has also been found near Middlesbrough in Yorkshire, 

 where a bed 100 feet thick has been penetrated ; and it is worked 

 near Carrickfergus, in Ireland, from three beds, averaging about 

 150 feet in thickness, with alternating brown marl and marlstone ; 

 but the last-mentioned locality furnishes only the comparatively 

 iiisignificant quantity of 20,000 tons annually. A portion of this 

 salt is mined as " rock-salt," chiefly at Winsford and Northwich, 

 where the solid bed was discovered in 1670 ; but the greater part is 

 pumped up to the surface in solution, or, in other words, obtained in 

 the form of artificial brine springs. 



The natural brine springs of the district have been used as sources 

 of salt from very early times — the names of the principal towns in 

 it terminating in wich or ivych, being of Saxon origin, wych mean- 

 ing a salt house or salt works. Sharon Turner notices the existence 

 of numerous grants of land made in Anglo-saxon times, in which 

 salt pans are specified as important articles. One of the earliest of 

 these is a grant by Kenulph, King of Mercia, to the Church of 

 Worcester, which bears date a.d. 816. Gf the extent to which this 

 industry was carried before the discovery of the salt deposits them- 

 selves, we have good evidence in the fact that during the reign of 

 Henry YI. there were 216 salt houses in Nantwich alone. 



Thus, for more than a thousand years we know that the waste of 

 the salt beds by the action of water has been going on ; and there is 

 no doubt that for thousands of ages, long before there were any men 

 to manufacture salt from the brine springs, the same process was in 

 full activity, especially, as Mr. Dickinson remarks, near the outcrop 

 of the deposits. Here, no doubt, true landslips took place in very 

 ancient times, altering and depressing the surface of the ground, 

 eifacing all traces of the outcrop of the salt beds, and giving origin 

 to the meres and mosses which are frequent in such positions, such 

 as the Great Budworth, Pick, and Eosthorne Meres, situated on the 

 outcrop of either the top or bottom bed of rock salt in Cheshire. 



Under the present system of working the salt, the landslips or 

 sinkings of the surface take place over the body of the deposit. They 

 are of two kinds, according as they are caused by the solution of the 

 rock-salt to form brine, or by the falling in of old pits. The latter 

 are comparatively of small extent, but the " brine-runs " reach for 

 miles away from the pits, and affect a much wider district, so that 

 the places in which sinkings may occur are quite uncertain, and the 

 depression may, and sometimes does, acquire a great extension, 

 involving considerable risk to property and even to human life. 

 The first recorded sinking caused by the flow of brine took place in 

 1533. Since that date many similar occurrences have been observed, 

 and there is ample evidence that the movement is still going on. 

 Thus the London and North-Western Kailway, where it crosses the 

 brine-runs, has gone down many feet, as between Crewe and Bird- 

 wood Junction, and on the Crewe and Stockport line. At Winsford 



