THIS week I would like to pay homage to the salt workers of Winsford, who worked the open pans since the Weaver was first made navigable in the 1720s.

They produced various types of salt such as fishery, butter salt, dairy, lump, stove unstoved and lagos, specially suited for the west African market.

Hedley Lucas' Homage to Cheshire poem went:

Of an olden line are the salt men,

Hewn of the strength of time,

Solid as were foundations when,

Salt to the gods was prime.

Looking through old directories almost every house in Winsford housed a salt worker.

Old maps show salt works all the way from the town bridge to Newbridge and beyond.

The jobs in the works included lofters, who passed the lump salt from the hot house, wallers, who drew the salt in the common plans, and lumpmen, who produced lump salt.

Salt men were a breed all on their own and they were not muscle-bound as one would expect.

They were wiry and extremely strong through being stripped to the waist working in the atmosphere created by the boiling brine.

They were religious and family orientated and they lived hard and played hard.

No wonder there were so many pubs in Winsford, it must have been a brewer's dream.

What could have been better than a few pints after working a 12-hour shift since 6am?

Saturday noon saw the salt workers knock off work.

Wages

Traditionally the wives would be at home with their best pinny on waiting for the wages to be dropped in their laps.

Then it would be off to the Saturday market, held in the market place and in the old market hall, where provisions would be obtained for the following week.

Saturday night was reserved for drinking and the occasional brawl.

Hare coursing meetings were held behind the North Western pub in late Victorian times. The salt men would gamble on the outcome with travelling bookmakers.

But they could be gentle enough to perform the crow dance at the Moulton Crow Fair and go to their respective churches with starched collars and suits on a Sunday.

Contrary to local belief the riot act was not read to the salt men of 1892, but they were threatened with it.

Winsford lost many of its sons in the Great War but those who returned were back at the open pans on their return as if nothing had happened.

Sons followed their fathers into the salt works, which became the Salt Union in 1888 to regulate the process of salt making before later becoming ICI in 1937.

The last open pan to close in the town was Hamlett's in 1956 to end two centuries of salt making.