Nantwich, about five miles from Crewe, is one of the towns which supplies Cheshire’s salt exports, Middlewich and Northwich being the other two.  In all, rich brine springs are found, but the celebrated mines of rock-salt are found at Northwich only.  It is vulgarly imagined that the word wich has something to do with salt, these three towns being often described as the “Wiches.”  This is an error; and wich is merely an Anglo-Saxon corruption of the Roman word vicus, as in Harwich.  The salt-works of Nantwich are mentioned in “Domesday Book.”  The town was more than once besieged during the great civil wars, lastly by Lord Byron, unsuccessfully, with an army chiefly Irish, which was compelled to raise the siege and defeated by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Sir William Brereton.

Among the antiquities remaining is a cross Church, in a mixture of styles, partly early English and partly decorated English, and a several curious old houses of black timber and plaster.

The trade of this place has derived much advantage from the junction of the Chester, Ellesmere, and Liverpool and Birmingham canals, close by.

At the Nantwich yearly fairs, samples of the famous Cheshire cheese made in the neighbourhood, of the best brands, may be found.  Major-General Harrison, one of the Regicides who was put to death on the Restoration of Charles II., was a native of Nantwich, and Milton’s widow, who was born in the neighbourhood, died there in 1726.

Just before reaching the Hartford Bridge Station, on the way to Chester, we pass Vale Royal Abbey, the seat of the Cholmondeley family, pronounced Chumleigh, whose head was created in 1821 Lord Delamere.

[Vale royal viaduct:  ill20.jpg]

The Abbey lies in a valley sheltered by old trees, the remains of a great forest; wood-covered hills rise behind it, closing in the vale; below runs the Weaver, “that famous flood,” whose praises were sung by Michael Drayton in his Polyolbion.  In this instance, as in many others, the “monks of old” showed their taste in choosing one of the most beautiful and fertile sites in the county for their residence.  The Cheshire prophet, Nixon, lived as ploughboy with the Cholmondeley family, according to tradition, for which we no more answer than for his prophecies, doubts having recently been thrown on both.  A breed of white cattle with red ears are preserved at Vale Royal, in memory of the preservation of part of the family by a white cow when in hiding during the Civil Wars.

But we have not space to enter into the details of this, or the historical reminiscences connected with the ruins of Beeston Castle, which also falls in our way to Chester; for we must get on to Liverpool and leave for the present Cheshire, with its cheesemaking pastures, ancient mansions, and more ancient families, as well as its coal mines and cotton mills, to visit the twin capitals of Liverpool and Manchester, which are at once the objects of the contempt and sources of the rent of the Cheshire territorial aristocracy.