holiday accommodation warrington, bed breakfast, cheshire uk, business hotel , tourist travel, weekend break, lodge, traveller, northwich, holiday accommodation warrington

You may find this relevant information helpful when researching the area prior to your visit

In the Domesday Book 36 manors are numbered in Worcestershire, and nearly as many in other Midland counties, which were entitled to obtain salt at Droitwich. These entries help to map out the salt routes of the area, along with local place names (ie they all led to Droitwich). Charter details (from around the 13th century on) also help to confirm these. Saxon Charters of the Midlands are known to have many references to 'salt-based' names, eg. sealstaet, saltera weg, & salteford.

In Cheshire, the Domesday Book names only 7 manors with salt-rights, all near the 'wiches', even further, comparatively near Northwich ; (They included Halton and Frodsham on one side, Tatton on the other, and Claverton, near Chester) although it is known that there was an elaborate organisation of the salt industry even in 'the time of King Edward'. In fact, the wiches were owned jointly by King Edward and Earl Edwin, who shared the proceeds of the salt-tolls 2:1. Possibly because of this, the wiches were not known as manors, nor as connected to manors.

Methods changed little over the years. The large estates and monasteries- some having 'salt-rights' (an exemption from paying salt-tolls at certain wiches), were more likely to obtain their supplies in bulk, annually, direct from the wich, while most people bought their salt from travelling salters who attended markets, fairs and other regular stopping points on the salt roads.

In later years monastic 'owners' included the Abbeys of St. Werburgh, Chester ; Vale Royal ; and Combermere: with Birkenhead Priory and Stanlaw in the Wirral, "but the latter soon removed to Whalley in Lancashire." Also, Basingwerk, in Flintshire. Others lay to the south: in Shropshire (Lilleshall Abbey, Shrewsbury Abbey, Wenlock Priory) ; or in Staffordshire (Burton, Ranton, Dieulacres, St. Thomas - Stafford).

In early times, when the saltways were in process of being named, monastic houses played little or no part. In Cheshire, salt was for sale 'to all-comers', although the 'stranger' from another hundred or another shire, paid a heavier toll than a native. (Although allegedly not so at Nantwich and Middlewich where a buyer from a distance (usually a 'bulk-buyer') was not so penalized). The regulation at Nantwich and Middlewich was that:- "Whoever carries away purchased salt in a cart from these two wiches paid four pence in toll if he had four oxen or more in his cart ; if two oxen he paid two pence." A man from another hundred "paid two pence" for a horse-load, "a man from the same hundred only a half-penny". If on foot, "twopence or a penny", respectively "for eight (man) loads".

At Northwich there was a distinction : the shire. "Anyone who brought a cart with two or more oxen from another shire paid four pence in toll. A man from the same shire paid two pence for his cart within the third night after his return home." That is, having loaded up with salt on say, the Monday, he would have all day Tuesday to reach his Market, or othr destination; sell his ware, and then all day Wednesday to get home (selling off anything left over on the way), before he paid his two pence.

"A man from another shire paid a penny for a horse-load", but a man from the same shire paid 'a minuta' "within the third night."