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 dating originally from the 15th and 16th centuries at the end of Hospital Street, which include Churche's Mansion, number 116 and numbers 140–142. These buildings survived the fire of 1583, which destroyed the town end of Hospital Street together with much of the centre of Nantwich. The Rookery is believed to stand near the site of the medieval Hospital of St Nicholas, which gives Hospital Street its name. The Rookery is a large detached Georgian building of two storeys, in red brick with stone dressings under a tiled roof. The front façade faces Millstone Lane and is set well back