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romans In Britain, lead salt pans were used by the Romans at Middlewich, Nantwich and Northwich and excavations at Middlewich and Nantwich have revealed extensive salt-making settlements. We even know the names of a few of the Roman saltmakers. These are inscribed on some of the lead pans - Viventius, Veluvius and Cunitus. Complete Roman salt pans are in the Salt Museum and at Nantwich Museum. The leaden pans were roughly 90-100cm square by 15cm deep. At Middlewich (Salinae) excavations have also revealed brine kilns on which Iron Age type earthenware vessels of brine were heated. Roman soldiers were partly paid in salt. It is said to be from this that we get the word soldier - 'sal dare', meaning to give salt. From the same source we get the word salary, 'salarium'. To sit above or below the salt identified precedence in the seating arrangements at a feast, according to one's rank. Not to be worth one's salt was a great insult. The Bible compliments some men as being 'the salt of the earth'. At the time of the Roman Conquest, British salt making had been long established at numerous coastal sites and at the inland brine springs of Cheshire and Worcestershire. Salt was a vital commodity to the Roman army and this demand will have been met by establishing military salt works. At the inland sites the nearly saturated natural brine would require much less fuel and time to make salt than from the evaporation of weakly saline sea water. The Roman army's advance to the North reached Cheshire by around 60AD and established military bases at Chester and Middlewich. Chester was a supply port and a convenient military base from which to gain control of North Wales with its lead and silver mines. At Middlewich a fort was built on a defensive site above the River Dane and this became a staging post on the main military road to the North. At Middlewich the Romans established their saltworks on land by the River Croco between the military fort and the site of the existing Celtic salt making settlement. Lead ore was another vital commodity to the Romans. It was used extensively for the fabrication of containers (for example, coffins) and other vessels for many purposes as well as to make pipes to supply clean water to their houses. Celtic Britain was a major supplier of lead to the Roman Empire and control of the mines of Somerset and North Wales was an important economic reason for the occupation of Britain. The crude lead also contained silver, and separation of silver from the lead was an important stage in the lead making process. Lead ingots and lead pipe with dateable AD 70's inscriptions have been found at Chester and lead brine-evaporation pans for making salt have been found at Northwich, Middlewich and Nantwich. While these pans have yet to be positively dated within the Roman period, it seems likely that the Romans introduced their use in the first century AD. The technology was clearly available and a Roman leadsmith who could make a pipe would find little difficulty in making a salt pan. Some supporting evidence has been provided by the recent discovery of late first century Roman military lead mining at Alderley Edge which is only ten miles away from Middlewich. While the extensive Alderley mines have yielded more copper over the years, the Roman mine shaft is tantalisingly near the location of what was once a thick vein of lead ore. The Celts were skilled metal workers and while there is little evidence for Celtic lead working. It remains an open question as to whether the use of lead salt pans could even pre-date the Romans. Lead is a readily recyclable metal and the lead from an unusable salt pan would be melted down and made into a new pan or put to other use. Hence no complete pan should be expected to survive in situ and for any complete pans to survive to the present day they must have been hidden well away from the salt making site. One recently discovered pan was already cut into eight pieces and was presumably in the process of being recycled. Lead salt pans were to be used continuously in Cheshire for fifteen centuries and were only replaced with iron pans in the 17th century when economic conditions made it necessary to change from a wood fuel to the much hotter burning coal. Documentary sources record the use of many hundred lead pans at the Cheshire salt towns during the late medieval period. And the market for scrap lead pans will have been saturated in the first part of the 17th century. Three centuries later a lead pan had become an object of interest to antiquarians and the first documentary record of the discovery of lead pans was in 1864 when four were found at Northwich and identified as Roman. Any further finds of lead pans during the next century went unreported, scrap lead being attractively priced, but the use of metal detectors in recent years has resulted in the discovery since 1982 of seven complete pans and portions from a further five pans. Of these pans, six had embossed Latin inscriptions and from these we know the names of their owners in Roman times. There was Cunitus, Lutamus, Veluvius, and Viventius. The latter's pan also had ‘COPI’ which could mean he was a bishop and thus a Christian, which gives his pan a late Roman date. The lead pan on display at the Salt Museum in Northwich is one of the four found at Northwich in 1864. While it has Roman characteristics it is rectangular and maybe of a later date than the two pans found near Nantwich in 1982. One of the latter is on display in the Nantwich Museum. The Lion Salt Works has three medieval pans found at Bostock near Middlewich in 1986 and also a replica Roman size lead pan which is used for live salt boiling displays. The inscribed Roman pans are roughly square, being internally about 90cm by 100cm and 13cm deep, but the medieval pans are without inscription and rectangular. They are also slightly smaller at about 90cm by 60cm and 13-15 cm deep. Documents of the 16th/17th century tell us the size of the lead pans then in use. Brine evaporation occurs with the deposit of scale on the hot pan bottom where this is exposed to the fire beneath. If this is allowed to become too thick the lead will overheat and melt. Hence the scale was regularly removed by picking with an iron implement which has left a pick mark on the lead bottom. All the Roman pans show these pick marks as a band down the middle with pick-free zones on either side. This shows conclusively that the pans were supported on solid walls about 50cm apart but somewhat surprisingly we have been left with no conclusive archaeological evidence of the nature of these substructures. Our knowledge of Roman life in Mid Cheshire has been greatly enhanced by two recent major archaeological digs on land scheduled for housing development. At both Middlewich in 2001 and at Nantwich in 2002 evidence was uncovered revealing that both towns had extensive early Roman industrial settlements with salt making and other trades. Both sites appear to have been abandoned at the end of the Roman period. There is no evidence of later medieval industrial activity and the land presumably returned to agricultural use soon after the Romans left. At both Middlewich and Nantwich the digs have produced a wealth of Roman period finds such as leatherwork, pottery and timber-lined clay packed pits. But both sites appear to lack the mass of briquetage which has been a feature of other salt making sites and indicative of Iron Age/ Bronze Age occupation. Middlewich has produced some briquetage indicative of early salt making but the Nantwich 2002 dig appears to have been a Roman lead pan site without earlier or later occupation. But no evidence remained of supporting substructures for the pans. As expected, no complete lead pans were found but at both sites the Roman occupation levels were littered with small fragments of lead "dribbles". These confirm the use of lead pans and are assumed to be from the accidental melting of overheated lead pans. This would certainly happen if a pan was allowed to boil dry. At one spot at Nantwich, an accumulation of lead fragments included plan clippings which can be identified as part of a salt pan and this was possibly the pansmith's workshop. G D Twigg - November 2002
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