Visit to the Lion Salt Works, Marston

Thursday 24^th August

Today we are off to the Lion Salt Works.  It is right on the canal and in fact we are moored outside.

Lion Salt Works

The Salt Works was constructed by Henry Ingram Thompson in 1894 and the salt works ran on this site for almost 100 years eventually closing in June 1986.  It is the last traditional open-pan salt making site and has been renovated and reconstructed now as a museum.

Nodding Donkey

Part of old Salt Ship

They have a great audio and video projection including the sights and smells of a working day which is really good, you can just imagine what it was like, really hot and dirty work.

Information Board

A Working Day

They have partially restored the Nodding Donkey which used to pump up the brine from the ground although it will never work again but is good to see.  We went in the Pump House  to see the Big Pump Engine which hopefully they will get working again one day.

They have also reproduced the Red Lion Inn which was built for the workers after a hard days work.

Crushing Machine

There are 4 Stove Houses to look around seeing how the salt was extracted as brine through to being packaged on site.  We saw the original salt pan, lofting holes and crushing machine.

There was also some lovely posters for the Mid Cheshire Railway Line and would you believe it, there is a place called Hale on that Line, I don't know we get everywhere!

Red Lion Pub

They also have a café and a shop and have made a Butterfly Garden in the grounds which is lovely with all the flowers which attract Butterflies.

Poster for Hale

We had a very enjoyable few hours wandering around, it was really interesting and well worth a visit.

We walked back to the boat and chilled out for a while then walked up to Neumann’s Flashes again to one of the hides and sat there for a while looking at the birds on the lake. There were lots of Lapwings and a few Snipe and moor hens and plenty of gulls.

Butterfly Garden

When we got back from our walk, we made some Damson Jam with the damsons we had picked a couple of days ago when we were at Billinge Green Flash and it came out okay and actually set so that was good.

Our homemade Damson Jam

We are staying here again tonight then off to Anderton tomorrow where we hope to go down the lift onto the River Weaver so looking forward to that.