Enroute this morning we passed stretches of water known as the 'Flashes' These were formed when the land subsided due to the mining of salt over hundreds of years. They were used to sink many working canal boats when trade was dropping off and British Watrways wanted to get rid of them.
We continued on to the site of the Lion Salt works at Marston. It was the last company in the UK to produce salt by the old method of evaporating the water from large salt pans filled with brine which was pumped up from underground. Production ceased in 1986 but the local council tried to run it as a living museum with the salt it produced exported to Nigeria. When this ceased to be viable the site completely closed and began to decay. Luckily they have now received a grant from the Heritage Lottery fund and Cheshire County Council and work is in progress to prevent further decline and to open it as a visitors centre and possibly conference centre. At the moment it is only open on 3 days a year and today was one of them. We had a personal tour for about half an hour with an archeologist and it was very interesting.
The bridges on this part of the canal were built with flat tops so that if more subsidence occurred they could be easily jacked up. 
Apparently lots of the houses were built with timber frames for the same reason. They could either be jacked up or moved to another site! Wonder how easy it was to get a mortgage.
We passed some chemical works where the steam pipes from the lime extraction were passing over the canal. I also noticed lots of planes flying to Manchester airport and thought that if you worked in such conditions at the Lime works you were probably longing to get away on holiday.
One of the old salt pans surrounded by scaffolding.
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