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
Hospital of St Nicholas, Nantwich Hospital of St Nicholas, Nantwich The Hospital of St Nicholas (variously known as St Nicholas Hospital, the Hospice of St Nicholas and the free Chapel and Hospice of St Nicholas) was a medieval hospital for travellers, which gave its name to Hospital Street in the English town of Nantwich in Cheshire. Founded in 1083–84 by William Malbank, first baron of Nantwich, it was dissolved in 1548 and probably later demolished. The Hospital of St Nicholas was founded by William Malbank, the first baron of Nantwich, in 1083–84, the eighteenth year of the reign of William I. His "post mortem" inquisition