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
The Rookery, Nantwich hall and flanking wings. Local historian Jeremy Lake has dated the roof timbers as late 16th or early 17th century. Sources The Rookery, Nantwich The Rookery, or 125 Hospital Street, is a substantial Georgian townhouse in Nantwich, Cheshire, England. It is located at the end of Hospital Street, on the north side, at the junction with Millstone Lane (at ). The existing building dates from the mid 18th century and is listed at grade II; English Heritage describes it as "good" in the listing. Nikolaus Pevsner describes it as "square and stately." It incorporates an earlier timber-framed house at the