Page:The Grand junction railway companion to Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham; (IA grandjunctionrai00free).pdf/71

 Tuesday in June. September 4th, and December 4th, principally for cattle, sheep, pigs, and once a fortnight for horned cattle, from Candlemas to the fair in March. The principal occupation of the inhabitants is the manufacture of salt, shoes, and cotton; it has also a large trade in cheese. Nantwich, it would appear, existed in the time of the Britons, previous to the Roman Invasion, when it was called Halen Gwyn, or the White Salt Town. Its present name is undoubtedly from the British word nant, a brook or marsh, and the Saxon vie, or as commonly pronounced, wich, a settlement, usually applied to places in which salt is made; the words combined signifying a salt town in a low or marshy situation. This is the first place in which salt was manufactured in Britain; hence the Romans named it Salinis; it is tolerably certain, however, that they obtained salt from the brine-springs only, as we find no mention of the salt-mines until the latter part of the seventeenth century. The inhabitants have the privilege of not serving on juries out of the town, or with strangers; this was confirmed in the reign of Elizabeth, but is of still more ancient date. The church, dedicated to St. Mary and St. Nicholas, is built in the form of a cross, with a semicircular choir, and a fine octagonal tower rising from the centre. This church contains a portion of the remains of Vale Royal Abbey, several of the stalls having been brought from thence at the period of the dissolution. The living is a rectory, in the archdeaconry and