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 Act 1972 replaced urban district and rural district councils with a uniform system of larger districts often covering both urban and rural areas. Some town administration responsibilities of Nantwich Urban District Council passed to Nantwich Town Council, while Nantwich Rural District Council responsibilities passed to the combined Crewe and Nantiwch borough. Since 1983, Nantwich has been in the parliamentary constituency of Crewe and Nantwich. Between 1955 and 1983, Nantwich was a parliamentary constituency in its own right, largely covering the areas managed by Nantwich urban and rural district councils (rural areas to the south, west and north of Nantwich now