Open-pan salt making from lead using wood as a fuel. In Britain they established towns for salt production at Droitwich in Worcestershire, and Nantwich, Middlewich and Northwich in Cheshire. In the early Middle Ages these developed into the 'wich' towns of Cheshire. Small 'wich' houses containing several lead pans to evapourate the brine into salt, clustered around brine springs within each of the towns. The open-pan process continued largely unchanged throughout the medieval period. A 17th-century German wood-cut by Georgius Agricola shows the process in detail. Excavated evidence has uncovered wooden rakes to draw salt crystals to the side of the pan, and
Nantwich (UK Parliament constituency) Nantwich (UK Parliament constituency) Nantwich was a parliamentary constituency in Cheshire which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected using the first-past-the-post voting system. It was created for the 1955 general election, and abolished for the 1983 general election. It was then largely replaced by the revived Eddisbury constituency, while the eponymous town became part of the new Crewe and Nantwich constituency. 1955-1974: The Urban Districts of Middlewich, Nantwich, and Winsford, and parts of the Rural Districts of Nantwich, Northwich, and Tarvin. 1974-1983: As prior but with redrawn