Now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, Lion Salt Works was the UK's last
surviving open pan salt works and one of only three left in the
world.
Salt production had been important to Cheshire since Roman times.
By the 19th century the region produced 86 per cent of the nation's
salt.
Lion Salt Works was established in 1894 by the Thompson family
and remained in their ownership through five generations. The works
produced salt by evaporating wild brine over an open fire in large
lead pans, and the different salts they produced would be employed
in the fishing, dairy and cosmetic industries. Workers would often
spend most of the week working, eating and sleeping at the works
and were often joined by their families. .
Lion Salt Works was closed in 1986. Today, despite subsidence
problems the site retains five of its pans, four of which are in
pan houses, while the fifth, which has collapsed, is an outdoor
structure. The site also features a few dilapidated timber-framed
buildings and a blacksmith's shop. Visits to the site have doubled
since it was featured on Restoration.
The prosperity of the village of Marston in Cheshire was seeded
around 250 million years ago when Britain was a shallow inland sea
near the equator. It is then that the rock salt for which the area
would become famous began to form. Salt has been produced in
Cheshire since the time of the Roman occupation, but it was the
discovery of Marston's unique geology in 1670 that would lead to
the wider exploitation of the resource.
Described in a record of 1850 as merely a 'scattered village and
township', by 1892, due to greater demand for salt, Marston had
become 'an important township and village.'