With special thanks to the De-Icing Business for granting members of the Underwych Project unusual permission to visit the mine in order to research its history and gain first-hand experience of modern salt-mining. I am also grateful to our fantastic guide Zoe Ellis and my writing companion Liz who kindly offered her photos for the Blog.
Please note that the De-Icing Business at Winsford Rock Salt Mine is not open to the public for visits and that this article is published with the agreement of all concerned.
“We’ll go down at No 3 shaft then it’s a straight mile underground to No 4, but two miles overground getting past Morrisons.”
Looking at the grid of the mine mapped onto the countryside, I could see that the familiar drive from Northwich through Bostock to Crewe would never be quite the same.
“We use the room and pillar method of mining which isn’t found in coal mines. You’d never leave a pillar of coal because of demand.”
Sepia faces stared at us from photographs of miners being lowered in a wooden tub. Thankfully, we were offered a modern lift. We put on blue overcoats, tried on different helmets for size and then steadied ourselves to receive the weight of the Oxygen Self Rescuer belt. Being instructed in its use was a bit like getting ready for take off. It was hard to believe that men were working the mine long before aircraft.
“We’ll go to the cinema in the Old Cavity 1844 and then drive right up to the faceline.”
Wooden tubs and shafts, black powder explosives, picks and shovels, iron tramways, tallow candles… history flickered on the screen 500ft below Winsford. We had picked our way from the lift to the rows of plastic chairs across a scoured floor which reminded us of a wave-rucked beach. Our boots had lifted over the man-made pattern; our lamps had lifted to reveal the same markings on the roof. Scraping the roof clean. We would remember miners’ preoccupation with scraping the roof clean.
We felt the weight of our Rescuer packs as we climbed onto the back of the truck before it rolled across the uneven floor of the Old Cavity towards the smooth salt-crete roads of the modern tunnels. Salt pillars rose like single cooling towers at intervals in the dark.
“There are larger pillars under the canal and only two tunnels under the railway line. We try and keep the mine at a similar depth so we don’t need to sink the shafts lower. That’s the beauty of this bed. It goes all the way to Droitwich.”
I remembered the geological maps and aerial photographs we had studied in the office somewhere overhead… rock salt, massive marl bands, drift, middle Keuper marl… Stanthorne, Croxton, Meadowbank, Bostock, the River Weaver and the Dane, the Trent and Mersey Canal, the West Coast Mainline railway…
“We’re in Bostock 5 panel. A panel is a worked out area.”
I found myself turning my lamp up toward the – scraped clean – ceiling. If we tried to burrow up to the surface, where would we find ourselves… surprising a cow, tangled in tree roots, bubbling up in a village pond or bumping our heads on the tarmac of a supermarket car park? At least we weren’t under the full weight of the North Sea which sits above much of the other major rock salt mine in the UK.
“Their geological events are up and down. We’re bound in by the Winsford Fault on the West and the King St fault on the East but our geological events are very mild. The Roman road runs alongside the King St fault so precisely it beggars the question: did they know the fault was there?”
“Of course, the Romans knew all about the naturally occurring wild brine layers. The layers may only be few centimetres thick but they cover a huge area. When they are at saturation point, they are buoyant like the Dead Sea. If you remove that layer or alter the table, you get problems. But wild brine pumping is illegal now.”
“There is no subsidence associated with this mine. Flashes are from white salt extraction; brine extraction.”
We stopped by FAB, the Fresh Air Base.
“Air is very lazy. We want it to travel round the mine for 10 ½ hours.”
Air cannot be left to its own devices, it seems. Instead, it is like an unruly flock of sheep that has to be shepherded round the mine. Curtains are shut like gates and the air is driven through salt tunnels for 4-5 miles.
“In Summer, it is very moist but running it through salt tunnels dries and cools it – a free dehumidifier.”
Double boomhead drills, circular chainsaws, tungsten tips, steel picks…
“Aluminium doesn’t last a minute with the salt...”
We got out of the truck and followed the green laser beam guiding us down a tunnel wide as a main road. The beam reminded me of the line of string that someone might set to plant a row of beans, but I wondered what kind of giant was shaking the ground ahead and blasting us with noise as we moved forward. A beast that had no need of the huge waist-high tube that ran alongside us taking clean air into its lair…
We began to avoid shouting conversation at each other to avoid gulping clouds of salty dust. The monster lay like a long insect beating multiple front legs against a wall.
“We go for a 4 metre cut…”
Rock salt collapsed repeatedly onto revolving plates which channelled the debris through the beast’s body and onto the conveyor belt. Two masked men ambled alongside, one playing a small machine like a Game Boy. Yet I had the feeling that the monster had to be placated as it raged against the rock; that the console only provided a slim tether.
Watching the roof being scraped clean reminded me that miners see rock as the unpredictable beast, however. But as soon as the rock is tamed, it is also herded through the tunnels.
“The British Standard for rock salt is based on Winsford. The mine closed in 1892 due to competition downstream but re-opened in the 1930s after flooding in the Northwich mines. Business has grown since then in response to gritting and the growth of the highways. 98% for roads, 2% cattle lick. We crush it to less than 6 mm to help protect windscreens.”
We followed the green laser thread back to the truck and drove on to Deep Store. The Crown Jewels are rumoured to have been hidden in the mine during World War II. Nowadays the fact that the mine has good security, no sunlight, acts as a free natural dehumidifier and temperature regulator, and that not even spiders bother to make webs down there has led to the storage of masses of archive material. One ‘room’ can hold 90,000 boxes. What was once a sea, now holds a sea of paper.
I came up with the taste of the seaside in my mouth. Rock salt mixed with the ancient marl dust that blew here from Triassic deserts and settled on the salt marshes which became this part of Cheshire. Marl dust that rain leeches out to form a crust on the huge stockpiles in the yard at the De-Icing Business.
“Salt is self-thatching here: dark on the outside and pink on the inside. When the weather’s dry, the salt is as pink as the day it came up.”
Pink as the lump that went home in my pocket.
Caroline Hawkridge
December 2006
Labels: Cheshire, rock salt mining
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