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 If
you were to look to your left as you drove down the drive to the
farm you would notice that there is a depression in the Drive
Field.
This is due to the fact that 170m
below Greenheyes is a rock salt mine. The depression is not due
to sudden collapse but rather it is due to the nature of the Rock
Salt in that over time it behaves as a very very viscus fluid
and under the pressure of the overlying rock it slowly flows.
Such depressions are not uncommon
in the mid cheshire countryside and are often visible as shallow
water filled depressions known as mere's
The County of Cheshire is famous
for the production of salt. This can be traced back to before
Roman times and the mining of the salt and related chemical industry
was at one time the main employer (along with agriculture) in
the mid Cheshire area.
The town of Northwich has a museum
dedicated to this visit it at www.cheshire.gov.uk/saltmuseum/index.html
.
The tunnels of the mine stretch
for some 123 miles under the cheshire countryside. Rock salt is
used mainly for the UK roads during the frosty winter months and
lorries come from all over the country collecting it.
PLEASE NOTE:
WE HAVE BEEN REQUESTED BY THE MINE OWNERS
TO INFORM OUR READERS THAT THEY NO LONGER GIVE TOURS OF THE MINE
I have lived over the mine all
my life and on quiet evenings you can hear the explosions of the
miners blasting out the salt. Earlier this month we were allowed
to visit the mine and these are some of the pictures.
You tour the mine in a minibus
for obvious reasons with the amount of tunnels.
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This
final picture is of Ivan our guide for the evening and the figure
of 1476 is the tonnage produced during that day. Thanks to Ivan
from all of us who went down and to Brian (friend of mine and
William of Moreton Contractors) for organizing it for us.
