Salt Industry of England. 
[March, 
154 
II. SALT INDUSTRY OF ENGLAND. 
I. Brine Pits. 
f ?WO methods generally are adopted for obtaining salt 
\ supplies in this country, viz., trom brine springs and 
from rock salt. The former is by far the more ancient 
of the two, as will be presently shown. At the earliest time 
of which we possess records on the subject wherever there 
was a brine spring or a manufacture of salt, the place 
appears to have been called Wich. Thus the name Droit- 
wich was probably originally Wich , and it is supposed that 
the prefix Droit was given to designate a certain legal or 
allowed brine pit. We have also Nantwich, Middlewich, 
Shirleywich, and so on. 
Some of the earliest records of the brine springs relate to 
those of Droitwich. From these it appears that in the year 
816 Kenulph, King of the Mercians, gave Hamilton and ten 
houses in Wich, with salt furnaces, to the Church of 
Worcester ; and about the year 906, Edwy, King of England, 
endowed the same church with Fepstone and five salt 
furnaces, or scales. In Domesday Book, when, between the 
years 1084 and 1086, William the Conqueror caused an 
inquiry to be made into the names of the several places, by 
whom they had been held in the time of Edward the Con- 
fessor, the last hereditary Saxon king, and who held them 
when the inquiry was made, the Wiches and salt houses 
then in operation are respectively recorded ; and it is clear 
that in these times, as regards Cheshire and the detached 
parts of Flintshire called Maylor, the rights of property were 
fully exercised over the brine springs and salt works, and 
and that there then existed certain well defined customs 
with regard to them. In King Edward’s time there was a 
Wich in Warmundestron hundred in which there was a well 
for making salt, and between the king and Earl Edwin there 
were eight salt houses, so divided that of all their issues and 
rents the king had two parts and the Earl the third. From 
our Lord’s Ascension to Martinmas anyone having a salt- 
house might carry home salt for his own house ; but if he 
sold any of it either there or elsewhere in the county of 
Cheshire, he paid toll to the king and the earl. Whoever 
after Martinmas carried away salt from any salt-house 
except one devoted to the earl’s private use paid toll, whether 
the salt was his own or purchased. In the year 1245 it is 
