WEEK 13 - Day 51 Clearing Salt, Stove House 5 and Laying Paths

Salt can set like concrete once it gets into the fabric of a building and is baked hot and stays dry.
Within stove Hose 1 we had to chip out the remaining salt with a percussion hammer.
The flue walls in this area have been robbed out many years ago but the remains of the walls indicate the layout of the flues and ditches which ducted the hot fumes from the Pan House to the chimney built on Ollershaw Lane.



Meanwhile the big digger spent a fourth day removing the ash, cinders and flue walls from the dismantled Stove House 5.
Over 100 tons of material has been removed from site. The materials which made up the infill of the stove house were themselves waste products of the Lion Salt Works. Henry Thompson used waste cinders deposited at the south side of the site that were raked from the earlier pan houses over decades of salt making.

Alongside all the dismantling and removal of contaminants we are also being constructive and looking to the future. Sue Beesley and Isabel Brookes have begun the creative landscaping that will transform the south west corner of our salt works into a tranquil butterfly garden in partnership with George Martin and the Butterfly Conservation gardening volunteers.

WEEK 13 - Day 50 Dismantling Stove 5

Work continued to dismantle Stove 5. In total 600 tons of ash, cinders and bricks have been removed since Monday. The position of the outer North wall is shown by the far left ranging rod.

WEEK 13 - Day 49 Cleaning Pan 5 and Starting Butterfly Garden

The clearance of the ash and cinders from Stove House 5 continued. There should be 18 lorry loads removed over the day, each carrying an average of 17 tons a trip. Salt also continued to be removed from Stove 1.

Two new activities started today. Cleaning of the salt pan moved from Pan House 5 started with a manual knocking of of surface debris. Apologies are due to all our neighbours for the resulting banging and hammering. this must have been what it was like when the salt pans were in use. The traditional practice was to 'pick' a salt pan pm a Monday morning to remove build up of pan scale and salt from the previous weeks salt making, so that fresh brine start to be heated for the new week.

The underside of the pan shows many original rivetted plates which have had new plates welded over the top. It has a patchwork appearance of overlying metal plates.

In the south west corner a cotter pin and patch was still in place. Phil was able to gentle tap the wedge out and take the drain patch apart.

We also began laying the paths for a recreational area to the south west of the site, which will be planted as a buddlea garden. This is funded by a landfill grant contribution made by Ineos Chlor via the Mersey Forest team. The paths are being edged today and will have hardcore laid over a membrane tomorrow.

WEEK 13 - Day 48 Stove House 1 and Stove House 5

Activities today involve dismantling three areas - the gable of Warehouse 1, salt from within Stove 1 and the stove area of Stove House 5.

To carry out the work safely external cladding has been erected along the side of the building.

Portable conveyor belting was installed to easy the manual handling of the salt debris from the stove area.

You can now really see that the stove area ran off from the Pan House at the first floor level. The machine tearing up the ash and cinders is really working hard because salt and brine has soaked into the fabric of the brickwork and the cinder base, setting like concrete in the high heat of the salt making process.