The Lion Salt Works, Cheshire
The restored heritage site is a fitting monument to an important industry
I first saw the Lion Salt Works in 2004 on the BBC television programme Restoration, which featured a range of hopefuls in search of publicity and lottery money.
All of them had problems, but the Lion Salt Works looked like a shipwreck beached in the Cheshire plains – a rambling range of cheaply built wooden sheds in various states of
decay, but with an important story to tell.
The Lion Salt Works is one of only three remaining open-pan sites in the world and a scheduled ancient monument. It didn’t win any money on Restoration, but fast forward a few years and here it is, sensitively conserved as a museum attraction thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund and the local authority.
Salt production had been a major local industry since the mid-18th century, and this works was opened beside the Trent and Mersey Canal in 1894 by the Thompson family, who ran it until production ended in 1986.
The name is derived from the Lion pub, in whose yard it was built. Naturally-occurring underground brine was boiled in huge pans to produce salt crystals. As export markets closed, the profits from salt production declined, so the family opened the site as a working attraction until it closed.
A trust was formed in 1983 to save it. The turning point was its purchase by the now defunct Vale Royal Borough Council. Let’s raise a glass to a local authority with the vision to intervene and the bravery to take on such a project. Its successor – Chester and Cheshire West Council – was equally bold to proceed with the scheme in the teeth of the recession in 2009.
The biggest achievement has been to preserve the site while retaining its authenticity. It has been rebuilt using original materials, adding to the feeling of a place arrested at the time of its closure. The museum gives a good impression of what it would have been like to do tough physical labour in an unsophisticated environment with fluctuating temperatures.
The building complex is an example of form following function, with a healthy dose of Heath Robinson adaptation and no aesthetic flourishes. When the walls leaned, the Thompsons shored them up with old metal railway tracks.
The tour of the pans and working areas follows a route that explains the simple process of salt making. The story is helped by oral history listening posts, steam rising from the huge pan and an imaginative audiovisual show. More abstract than recreation, the show portrays a typical working day with a poetic narrative and simple, folk-based score.
A successful recreation
The Lion Salt Works has an excellent archive and makes good use of stunning photographs and oral history. A large gallery uses a range of reconstructed scenes, with models showing the jobs done in the works, such as cutting, boiling and packing. Most of the duties were done by men on piecework. The warm conditions meant they worked bare-chested, though moustaches seemed to be a popular choice.
There is also space to examine current debates about the use of salt, including added salt in food. This section closes with a view onto the canal and the “flashes” of water created by salt extraction.
As a result, the area is prone to subsidence, and the mine opposite the works collapsed to form a large lake and woodland, now a nature reserve with abundant buddleia, birds and butterflies.
The more formal museum element is housed in the former Lion pub and tells the story of the Cheshire salt industry and the works. It is functional yet lively, with great imagery and well-scripted audiovisuals.
The reconstructed pub and office look too clean though, displaying qualities that Victorian art critic John Ruskin termed “fatal newness”. If you have a photograph of the office showing its walls were match-boarded and the fireplace had a black-leaded stone lintel, then use those materials, not MDF and stain.
The pub is used as an educational space and features one of my favourite objects in the venue – a model ship made by dipping string in salt brine.
The tour ends in the shop and cafe, which look out onto a children’s play area. The cafe is light and spacious, and has friendly staff. The shop has the usual range of tasteful souvenirs, jewellery and pocket money toys, along with books on the salt industry.
There is an opportunity to develop more of a Lion Salt Works brand though – the old packaging would make great tea towels and posters, and replica tinplate stencils would appeal to the shabby chic brigade. The venue also needs to ring John Hudson (our best slipware potter) and sell some proper salt pigs.
Big new capital projects live in strange times. Local authorities still want them, but their revenue budgets are continually slashed by the government. Increasingly, new projects need revenue streams designed into them.
The works, run by Cheshire West and Chester Council, has been developed to appeal to specialists and family groups. It charges for admission and has an annual family ticket. Access to the playground, shop and cafe is free, and there are excellent conference facilities. It will need to make all these areas work to their full potential to meet forecast running costs of £400,000 a year.
The trust is still active and will support the council, which plans to reintroduce salt production. This will enhance the visitor experience and provide a new income stream.
Overall, the Lion Salt Works is a success. It provides a good day out for visitors and is a fitting monument to an important industry.
It could have so easily rotted away into the strange industrial landscape that surrounds it. However, there will be challenges. The buildings will always require attention and, being located in a rural area dependent on cars, means it will need to work hard to maintain audiences and revenue.
The staff and volunteers know this and the place has a sense of optimism about it. So throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder, wish them luck and go and see the works for yourself.
Mark Suggitt is the director of the Derwent Valley World Heritage Site in Derbyshire
Extraordinarily difficult conditions were encountered during the design and installation of interpretive displays in the Lion Salt Works.
The collection of wooden sheds and brick walls that had subsided had to be painstakingly dismantled as part of the restoration process and rebuilt on new foundations. Discreet metal supports held the whole structure together, a huge task for structural engineers and conservation architects.
A guiding principle was to preserve as much as we could of the original buildings and to reuse original materials wherever possible. As a result, steeply sloping and bowed floors were fixed where they could be to joists and walls, providing memorably idiosyncratic interiors.
This meant that the displays needed to be carefully scribed in to their locations to even out the bumps, slopes and depressions. We were also instructed that no screws or nails should be fixed to the timbers and brick: strapping, wedging and fixing through existing gaps was the order of the day to locate display structures.
It is to the credit of the fitout contractor (Beck Interiors) and its sub-contractors that they complied with these demands willingly and with considerable skill. The original buildings had natural ventilation – holes in the roofs and spaces between plank walls – to allow steam from the evaporating brine to escape.
This presented us with a challenge in providing displays that would be engaging enough to wow visitors yet be built to withstand semi-outdoor conditions. Many preventative measures were used at the site throughout construction, including specifying durable materials, housing vulnerable audiovisual control equipment in the stable environment of a new building, and fitting insulated, protective enclosures around the projectors in the Boiling Pan Experience.
Richard Fowler is the creative director of RFA Design
Cost £10.2m (fitout £932,600)
Main funders Cheshire West and Chester Council; Heritage Lottery Fund £5.3m; Historic England £300,000; European Union Manage+ £280,000; Butterfly Conservation Trust
Architect Donald Insall Associates
Main contractor Wates Construction
Restoration specialist William Anelay
Exhibition design RFA Design
Fitout Beck Interiors
Audiovisual programmes Centre Screen
AV equipment Atlas AV
Hands-on interactives Aivaf
Display cases Showguard
Archaeological work Cheshire West and Chester Council
All of them had problems, but the Lion Salt Works looked like a shipwreck beached in the Cheshire plains – a rambling range of cheaply built wooden sheds in various states of
decay, but with an important story to tell.
The Lion Salt Works is one of only three remaining open-pan sites in the world and a scheduled ancient monument. It didn’t win any money on Restoration, but fast forward a few years and here it is, sensitively conserved as a museum attraction thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund and the local authority.
Salt production had been a major local industry since the mid-18th century, and this works was opened beside the Trent and Mersey Canal in 1894 by the Thompson family, who ran it until production ended in 1986.
The name is derived from the Lion pub, in whose yard it was built. Naturally-occurring underground brine was boiled in huge pans to produce salt crystals. As export markets closed, the profits from salt production declined, so the family opened the site as a working attraction until it closed.
A trust was formed in 1983 to save it. The turning point was its purchase by the now defunct Vale Royal Borough Council. Let’s raise a glass to a local authority with the vision to intervene and the bravery to take on such a project. Its successor – Chester and Cheshire West Council – was equally bold to proceed with the scheme in the teeth of the recession in 2009.
The biggest achievement has been to preserve the site while retaining its authenticity. It has been rebuilt using original materials, adding to the feeling of a place arrested at the time of its closure. The museum gives a good impression of what it would have been like to do tough physical labour in an unsophisticated environment with fluctuating temperatures.
The building complex is an example of form following function, with a healthy dose of Heath Robinson adaptation and no aesthetic flourishes. When the walls leaned, the Thompsons shored them up with old metal railway tracks.
The tour of the pans and working areas follows a route that explains the simple process of salt making. The story is helped by oral history listening posts, steam rising from the huge pan and an imaginative audiovisual show. More abstract than recreation, the show portrays a typical working day with a poetic narrative and simple, folk-based score.
A successful recreation
The Lion Salt Works has an excellent archive and makes good use of stunning photographs and oral history. A large gallery uses a range of reconstructed scenes, with models showing the jobs done in the works, such as cutting, boiling and packing. Most of the duties were done by men on piecework. The warm conditions meant they worked bare-chested, though moustaches seemed to be a popular choice.
There is also space to examine current debates about the use of salt, including added salt in food. This section closes with a view onto the canal and the “flashes” of water created by salt extraction.
As a result, the area is prone to subsidence, and the mine opposite the works collapsed to form a large lake and woodland, now a nature reserve with abundant buddleia, birds and butterflies.
The more formal museum element is housed in the former Lion pub and tells the story of the Cheshire salt industry and the works. It is functional yet lively, with great imagery and well-scripted audiovisuals.
The reconstructed pub and office look too clean though, displaying qualities that Victorian art critic John Ruskin termed “fatal newness”. If you have a photograph of the office showing its walls were match-boarded and the fireplace had a black-leaded stone lintel, then use those materials, not MDF and stain.
The pub is used as an educational space and features one of my favourite objects in the venue – a model ship made by dipping string in salt brine.
The tour ends in the shop and cafe, which look out onto a children’s play area. The cafe is light and spacious, and has friendly staff. The shop has the usual range of tasteful souvenirs, jewellery and pocket money toys, along with books on the salt industry.
There is an opportunity to develop more of a Lion Salt Works brand though – the old packaging would make great tea towels and posters, and replica tinplate stencils would appeal to the shabby chic brigade. The venue also needs to ring John Hudson (our best slipware potter) and sell some proper salt pigs.
Big new capital projects live in strange times. Local authorities still want them, but their revenue budgets are continually slashed by the government. Increasingly, new projects need revenue streams designed into them.
The works, run by Cheshire West and Chester Council, has been developed to appeal to specialists and family groups. It charges for admission and has an annual family ticket. Access to the playground, shop and cafe is free, and there are excellent conference facilities. It will need to make all these areas work to their full potential to meet forecast running costs of £400,000 a year.
The trust is still active and will support the council, which plans to reintroduce salt production. This will enhance the visitor experience and provide a new income stream.
Overall, the Lion Salt Works is a success. It provides a good day out for visitors and is a fitting monument to an important industry.
It could have so easily rotted away into the strange industrial landscape that surrounds it. However, there will be challenges. The buildings will always require attention and, being located in a rural area dependent on cars, means it will need to work hard to maintain audiences and revenue.
The staff and volunteers know this and the place has a sense of optimism about it. So throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder, wish them luck and go and see the works for yourself.
Mark Suggitt is the director of the Derwent Valley World Heritage Site in Derbyshire
Focus on exhibition design and fit-out
Extraordinarily difficult conditions were encountered during the design and installation of interpretive displays in the Lion Salt Works.
The collection of wooden sheds and brick walls that had subsided had to be painstakingly dismantled as part of the restoration process and rebuilt on new foundations. Discreet metal supports held the whole structure together, a huge task for structural engineers and conservation architects.
A guiding principle was to preserve as much as we could of the original buildings and to reuse original materials wherever possible. As a result, steeply sloping and bowed floors were fixed where they could be to joists and walls, providing memorably idiosyncratic interiors.
This meant that the displays needed to be carefully scribed in to their locations to even out the bumps, slopes and depressions. We were also instructed that no screws or nails should be fixed to the timbers and brick: strapping, wedging and fixing through existing gaps was the order of the day to locate display structures.
It is to the credit of the fitout contractor (Beck Interiors) and its sub-contractors that they complied with these demands willingly and with considerable skill. The original buildings had natural ventilation – holes in the roofs and spaces between plank walls – to allow steam from the evaporating brine to escape.
This presented us with a challenge in providing displays that would be engaging enough to wow visitors yet be built to withstand semi-outdoor conditions. Many preventative measures were used at the site throughout construction, including specifying durable materials, housing vulnerable audiovisual control equipment in the stable environment of a new building, and fitting insulated, protective enclosures around the projectors in the Boiling Pan Experience.
Richard Fowler is the creative director of RFA Design
Project data
Cost £10.2m (fitout £932,600)
Main funders Cheshire West and Chester Council; Heritage Lottery Fund £5.3m; Historic England £300,000; European Union Manage+ £280,000; Butterfly Conservation Trust
Architect Donald Insall Associates
Main contractor Wates Construction
Restoration specialist William Anelay
Exhibition design RFA Design
Fitout Beck Interiors
Audiovisual programmes Centre Screen
AV equipment Atlas AV
Hands-on interactives Aivaf
Display cases Showguard
Archaeological work Cheshire West and Chester Council