File:Crabmill Flash.jpg

English: Crabmill Flash

I did not think I had visited this square before but it turns out I had, nearly ten years earlier: SJ7160 : Farm machinery. See also SJ7160 : Sandbach Flashes: Crabmill Flash for the flash. Cheshire flashes

The historic salt industry in south Cheshire began as the small-scale exploitation of natural brine springs and eventually led to industrial scale brine pumping. The paractice was particularly common from the 1920s to 1970s in the area around Middlewich and Sandbach, where brine was pumped out of disused salt mine workings. This led to the eventual collapse of the large underground chambers. The resulting subsidence at ground level formed water-filled depressions known as "flashes", which attract wading birds more often found in coastal saltmarshes and the like. The phenomenon (without the saline water) is also found in coal mining areas: see the similar Shared Description for Wigan Flashes. For a fuller explanation and maps, see LinkExternal link