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THERE
has been much excitement in the world of archaeology and history this month
(January) with
the discovery of a salt ship. No, that's not a vessel for transporting the
condiment via sea - although, as one observer pointed out, it did look like a
dug-out canoe.
A salt ship is, or was, a large storage vessel for brine which was used in
Nantwich's salt producing industry in medieval times. Take an oak tree, cut off
the roots and branches, leaving the tree trunk measuring 7.5 metres, hollow it out, and you have a salt
ship.
One way of producing salt, as you may know, is by
boiling off the water content of brine.
(Other salt is found in salt mines as at Winsford, Cheshire).
Of course, you couldn't boil brine in an oak trunk, or you wouldn't have
the ship for long. Boiling was done in lead pans - an example of which
can be seen in Nantwich Museum. (You can read more about the salt ship
on a page of the museum's website: www.nantwichmuseum.org.uk).
It was while I was taking photographs for the museum's website (in my
role as webmaster) and for the archives so that future Dabbers can know
what happened, that I was privileged to see the moment of rediscovered
history earlier this month. A team of archaeolgists from Earthworks
Archaeological Services from Ewloe, Flintshire, had moved on to a site that was then a car park,
but on which terraces of houses used to stand, to see what lay under
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At this point I should pay tribute to the three Schofield Brothers who
own the adjacent Curshaw's cafe, bar, eaterie
and rooms (right) as well as the dig site.
Older Dabbers will remember that the Curshaw's building was once known
as The Cheshire Cat - a restaurant at one time owned by the brothers' uncle,
William (Bill) Schofield. It later became a nightclub called Korky's. The brothers
halted their plans to build houses on the site. They were
community-spirited enough to let the archaeologists take a look first.
Back
to the dig . . . I won't repeat the whole story (as I say, you can read
about it on the Nantwich Museum website) but the upshot was that thanks to a
grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, arranged by Cheshire County
Council, the salt ship is going to be preserved in a two-year project
and will then go on display at Nantwich Museum. |
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And so it was that on a Monday morning early in January that a group of
archaeologists, museum officials and the general public stood in the
pouring rain and watched as a large crane lifted the 2.3-tonne salt ship
from an eight-foot deep hole in the ground and placed it gently on the
back of a low loader on which a bed of sand
had been laid to support the piece of oak.
From his vantage point in the cab of the crane, the crane driver watched as
the hook was attached with slings to the ship "It weighs
over a tonne," he said, watching the scale in his cab
as the crane took the strain. "Two tonnes . . . Two point three tonnes." The timber structure was then swung effortlessly (below) on to
the waiting low loader to be taken away, sealed in black plastic.
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The team from
Earthworks Archaeology - who did both the
initial dig and the latest excavation - secured the site as the official
"treasure hunter" assigned to the project passed his metal
detector over the spot where the ship had lain, searching for any artefacts
which had been buried underneath.
By
now the officials and the crowd had left. The voice of a cynic was
heard: "All that to get one buried tree out of the ground?!"
Perhaps he was not being serious, but it will probably
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