NORTHWICH, a town of the county of Chester, in the hundred of the same name, being a part of the parish of Badworth, twelves miles from Chester and 174 from London. It is an old-fashioned and insignificant place, standing on the river Wever, which is navigable to Liverpool, and therefore of great importance to the produce in the vicinity of that town. There is an old well-endowed grammar school, and a weekly market held on Friday. The population, partly employed in the cotton manufacture,but chiefly in the preparation of salt, amounted in 1801 to 1338, in 1811 to 1382, in 1821 to 1490, and in 1831 to 1481. Near the town, on the south side, are those pits wherein are found the vast masses of salt which have supplied that condiment to the extent of several hundred thousand bushels for a very long period of time. The principal pit in the Northwich salt-mines is now called the Marston Pit, though it was formerly known under the name of the Burns’s Pit. It consists of two levels, the lower of which is one hundred and twelve yards below the surface of the ground, and the other just half way down the shaft. The lower level is the most extensive excavation, as well as the oldest of the two, and has been worked about sixty years. The descent is into a magnificent chamber, apparently of unlimited extent, the flat roof of which presents so great an area, that astonishment is felt by the spectatorat its not having long since given way. There is, however, no real want of security, it being as sound and durable as if formed of adamant, and is supported by pillars, in size like clumps of bricks in a brick-field; the extent of the area appears to the eye as if a space equal to Grosvenor Square were under cover. The beauty of the glistening particles of crystallized salt upon the walls, which are as hard as freestone, and the extreme regularity of the concentric curved lines, traced by the workman’s tools, are very remarkable. Here and there the solid rock has been blasted, and marks of the jumper chisel are visible. Under foot the whole surface is a mass of rock-salt covered with a layer of the material crushed and crumbled to a state exactly resembling the powdered ice on a pond that has been cut by skaters.
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Experiments have been made by boring to a depth of seventeen yards, but they have neither perforated the rock salt, nor do they at present know the thickness of the stratum. The height of this excavation is about fifteen feet, within which space the salt is estimated as being of the best quality; but above, it is somewhat inferior. Thirty-five thousand tons of salt were annually dug out of the different levels, and the area of the whole together amounts to forty-eight statute acres. At one part there is a vista of two hundred yards in length, which has been dignified by the name of Regent Street. The salt, after being prepared by the solution of the rock and evaporation, is formed by wooden moulds, with holes at the bottom, to allow the remaining water to pass through into cubical blocks, and in this state it is shipped, either by the river Weaver and the canal to Weston Point, and thence into the Mersey, or by the canal southward. A considerable quantity of this salt is exported to Prussia. Much salt is prepared from the brine springs, some of which are so strongly saturated as to hold in solution the greatest quantity of salt. To the water of some of these springs rock-salt is added whilst boiling in the pans. From these springs the water, or brine, is raised by a sunk shaft, and a pump worked by an ordinary machine.