Lime and Brine in Anderton Nature Park, November 2006

With thanks to Cheshire County Council’s Countryside Management Service, Dave James and his dog Blue (our amiable and tail-wagging hosts) and my writing companion Lisa.

Lisa feels the tactile wooden map of Anderton Nature Park, her cold fingers listening to the corrugations which trace Witton Brook and the River Weaver Navigation. She finds their confluence. The long ridge of the Trent and Mersey Canal is chiselled above.

“Barges laden with Wedgwood pottery arrived from Staffordshire on the canal and used the Anderton Boat Lift to reach the River Weaver Navigation which flows out to the Mersey.”

I realise that what none of us can see clearly is the history, the numerous previous landscapes of this area. But we have come to feel them.

“Anderton Nature Park is about a hundred acres. Two-thirds of it was Witton Flashes, one of the huge areas of ground which collapsed.”

We turn to Dave's 1910 map where Witton Flashes sprawl like spilt ink. As I try to imagine fractured lanes and sunken fields, my sense of place begins to blur.

“There were several known rock salt mines under the land that fell into the Flashes, but bastard brine pumping was also going on. Any family could pump wild brine. The other third of the Park was covered by the known salt works. White salt was boiled out of brine in huge iron salt pans…”

Dave guides Lisa’s hand to three round ponds that used to store the pumped brine but which now provide coarse fishing.

“Today Witton Flashes have become Haydn’s Pool, Marshall’s Wood and Witton Mill Meadows.”

Dave moves her fingers to follow raised areas of relief. I remember the trees of green fuzz that came with my brother’s railway set.

“But the woods are recent. In the 1930s and ‘40s the Flashes were turned into huge beds of limewaste.”

Salt sheds, tracks and a gantry bridge across the Weaver stand out against a grainy lagoon of pale industrial limewaste in the old aerial photograph. It is 1939 and there's not a tree in sight.

“They built bund walls using rubble, ash and cinder and then slowly filled the beds with alkaline lime-rich waste from the salt-based soda ash industry on the opposite bank. Later, parts of the area were capped with clay and Nature took hold. Let’s go and have a look.”

Dave’s dog Blue leads the way, imprinting his own tactile map in a muddy spot by the path. Anderton Nature Park is a happy place for dogs. They bundle out of cars, unfolding wagging tails, as owners adjust leads, hats and gloves before lengthening their stride.

Red hawthorn berries and clusters of scarlet rowan fire the afternoon sky like hot coals beneath salt pans as we talk of brine. We reach the three storage ponds, now pools fished for perch, roach, rudd. Nearby, we find a low wall and a few huge sandstone blocks: all that remains of the salt sheds and steam pump.

“Coal was unloaded straight into the fires.”

Dave walks us through grassland, our strides marking the surprising length of the shed foundations. The clamour of the pump and stink of smoke and ash have given way to birds in thickets of blackthorn. In the breeze, the undersides of silver poplar leaves flash like fish.

Heading for the woods, we pass meadows ready for Winter. Meadows hiding lime-loving fragrant orchids which are otherwise rare in the neutral or acid soils of Cheshire. Creeping willow has also crept here, and birdsfoot trefoil with its birdclaw seed pods. Come the Summer, blue butterflies and rare dingy skippers will fly above the trefoil's yellow pea-flowers.

“Beneath the clay cap is thirty feet of lime waste. Stand still and close your eyes, then feel through your feet while we jump up and down.”

Ah, yes.

“The lime bed is slightly liquid, like toothpaste, and therefore carries vibrations. Now we’ll close our eyes and you jump.”

I imagine my weight vaguely quaking a buried lake of caustic industrial limewaste.

As we enter the woods, braided trunks of silver birch shed a salty-white – or is it limey – light. We wind through the trees and out past stands of fluffy seed which breaks like ancient surf across the glade.

“Seeds of hemp agrimony.”

We turn down the steep ash banks of the bund past tall teasel and weld and walk alongside Witton Brook towards the brand new span of Carden’s Ferry Footbridge. Reedbeds shuttle in the wind, quiet without their nesting colonies of migrant warblers.

We reach the confluence that Lisa felt on the map a hour or so ago. The wide Witton Brook runs into the wider River Weaver Navigation. It is hard to imagine it all temporarily flowing backwards to flood the Flashes during a massive land-collapse well over a hundred years ago.

Downstream, Brunner Mond bends its back on the bank opposite the Boat Lift. The Weaver is no longer ploughed by steam packets and industrial barges and there are few pleasure boats on this wintery day.

As we head for the dragonfly pond below the bund, the air cracks with gunshot.

“The rifle range has been here for over 70 years…”

But it is the names of coastal plants that take root in my ear… sea spurrey, lesser sea-spurrey, sea mouse-ear, sea club-rush, wild celery. They live here in Anderton, miles from the ocean, but where salt seeps from the soil.

“Dragonflies thrive in this pond because the water is too salty for frogs, newts or fish.”

Calopteryx splendens, Lestes sponsa, Brachytron pretense, Aeshna grandis, Sympetrum sanguineum, Libellula quadrimaculata…

Some of the Latin names of the extraordinary range of damselflies, dragonflies, darters, hawkers and chasers at Anderton. Latin names that would surprise the Romans who exploited Condate’s brine springs; Romans who may well have known the armoured insects with their crystalline wings. Latin names that fly from the twenty-first century tongues of visiting entomologists.

Large Red, Common Blue, Azure, Emerald, Red-eyed or Blue-tailed Damselflies. Broad-bodied and Four-spotted Chasers.

Words that open their wings.

Brown, Southern and Migrant Hawkers. The Common Hawker that is rare here. Hairy Dragonfly, Black-tailed Skimmer.

Words like wind over water.

Ruddy, Common and Yellow-winged Darters, the Emperor Dragonfly and Banded Demoiselle.

Words that stitch the air with Summer.

Caroline Hawkridge, Vale Royal Writers' Group
Posted with the permission of all concerned.

PS I have just worked out how to add a link and realise that it has created one with the title of this post. How amazing! Try it :)