A walk worth its salt

For a pleasant, easy winter walk, with no slippery stiles or boggy fields to cross, we head to Hassall Green and Rode Heath, just north of Alsager

- Paul Taylor

The history of Cheshire is also a history of salt: the people it brought here, the towns it created, the way it shaped the very landscape.

The sea lapped over the Cheshire Basin more than 200 million years ago, and when the waters retreated and the salt marshes dried out, the precious NaCl remained, not too far below the surface.

When the Romans arrived in Cheshire, settlements grew around the places where salt could be extracted from brine springs. Any town with a -wich suffix – Northwich, Middlewich, Nantwich – is a salt town. Indeed, so much salt was extracted from beneath Northwich that by late Victorian times, the resulting subsidence in the town became a matter of national concern, prompting an Act of Parliament to compensate those affected.

We start this month’s walk on the Salt Line, recalling the days when this area was busy with industry exploiting those salt deposits. There were brine shafts, and salt works in which that brine was boiled to yield the white crystals to salt our meat and feed a host of industrial needs, including the chemical industry so vital to Cheshire’s economy.