As a child, my world included a map of Cheshire which was shaped like a teapot, and a book called ‘Alice in Wonderland’, which told of a dormouse asleep in a teapot.
The book was written by Lewis Carroll, who was born in Cheshire in 1832. When the book was published, in 1865, the author was a mathematics teacher at Oxford University.
Alice’s adventures were in a Wonderland under the ground. I don’t know whether Lewis Carroll would be aware of the amount of salt being taken from below the Cheshire County of that time.
By the time I read about Alice, there were problems above ground, caused by land, including houses, subsiding into holes left by the removal of salt in great quantities.
Last winter, lorries queued for hours on the local roads, waiting to obtain precious salt required to keep main roads nationally free of ice. Of course, the modern salt extraction methods leave no holes underground. Also, many of the previous areas of subsidence are now peaceful lakes or flashes, with varied rare, exotic birds visiting occasionally.
Some of the larger mines have been used for storage, as they are so dry and are at constant temperature. Gas storage was very controversial, perhaps so much so that there is less awareness of the archives also stored underground. Like the salt, those archives are mainly irreplaceable.
At the same time as Lewis Carroll was writing about Alice’s adventures, there were developments in the transportation of salt to the various places where it was needed in many manufacturing processes.
Our local ‘Salt Line’ Railway in now mainly a leisure walkway. Foden lorries became known all over the world, along with those from ERF. The Sandbach Sound is carried everywhere by Foden’s Brass band these days, despite the closure of both ERF and Foden factories. Perhaps the remaining part of the old ‘Salt Line’ railway, the part between Sandbach and Northwich, could be re-opened to provide a more environmentally acceptable link in the delivery of salt for icy roads across the country.
My childhood ‘Teapot’ map of Cheshire has also changed shape recently. Two separate Councils are required to decide on the Planning Applications for two waste disposal incinerators., which are only a few miles apart.
Alice could possibly walk between the two sites along the underground passageways left from salt extraction.
The Oxford Children’s Book of Famous People states: ‘Carroll’s story books are sort of adventure stories, but they do not unfold like ordinary stories.
Sometimes one thing will turn into another, as if in a dream, while at other times the people in the book seem to be moving about in a game, the rules of which are never quite clear.’
Just a thought !
Mary Garratt (Mrs)
7th April 2010
