Cheshire’s Lion Salt Works Museum celebrates ‘International Year of Glass’

Cheshire's Lion Salt Works Museum, one of the country's leading industrial heritage museums, will explore the often forgotten link between glass and salt in its exhibition: 'In Flux: Salt and Glass in the North-West'.

Designed to mark the United Nation’s ‘International Year of Glass’, the exhibition explores glass through the eyes of people who work within the industry in the North-West. It also considers how the production of the salt-derived flux, sodium carbonate - made using salt from Cheshire's vast salt deposits - gave a natural advantage to glass-makers in the region. Entry to the exhibition is included in the standard entry price of the museum*. For further information go to:

www.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk 

The colourful exhibition explores the history of glass from the perspectives of a curator of Roman glass at Chester's Grosvenor Museum as well as Recclesia Stained Glass, a leading glass restoration company. Encirc, one of the country's biggest glass bottle manufacturers considers the importance of glass in everyday use and a leading North-West architect from Donald Insall Associates looks at the role of glass in building design. The Lion Salt Works Museum examines the specific role of Cheshire salt in North-West glass manufacture and the exhibition concludes with an update on the sustainable glass research and development company, Glass Futures, opening later this year in St Helens.     

The Lion Salt Works Museum is one of the last open-pan, salt-making sites in the world and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, with the same protection status as Stonehenge. Extracting salt from beneath the Cheshire Plain has been a key industry for Cheshire for over 2000 years – whether through boiling naturally-occurring brine (such as at the Lion Salt Works) or later, by mining. 

Councillor Louise Gittins, Leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council said: “Glass is something we take for granted but is key to modern life. Most of us know that the North-West has had a long history of glass-making thanks to pioneering glass processes in St Helens, but I think few would think that the easy supply of Cheshire salt gave the glass industry a natural advantage.  

“This exciting exhibition throws new light on a North-West industry that we thought we understood, as well as showing how the region will once again be pioneering global changes in the glass-making industry. This exhibition from the innovative Lion Salt Works Museum is colourful and thought-provoking and I hope inspires everyone who visits it.” 

About the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) 

From archaeology to historic parks and buildings and from collections to rare wildlife, HLF uses National Lottery players’ money to help people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about:

www.hlf.org.uk.  

http://www.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk

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Facebook: Weaver Hall Museum and Lion Salt Works

Pictured - Medieval Glass on display at the Pilkington Gallery at The World of Glass.