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
Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum The Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum is a museum about the history of ball clay mining in the Isle of Purbeck. The museum is located adjacent to Norden station on the Swanage Railway and is open from the end of March to the end of September on Saturdays, Sundays, Tuesday, Wednesdays and Bank Holidays from 11am to 4.30pm. At the site the group has relocated a redundant mine to Norden and built a railway around the site with a new engine shed and the restoration of wagons that worked on the lines around Norden. The