According to Leland, there were 400 salt works at Nantwich in the reign of Henry VIII, but the number was reduced to 216 under Elizabeth, and in 1624 only 108 were in existence. Nantwich was described in the _London Magazine_ of 1750 as the largest and most considerable town in the county next to Chester, but its salt industry at that period was fast declining. An Act of Parliament which had been obtained in 1734 to extend the navigation of the river Weaver from Winsford to Nantwich, was never put into operation. In 1778 the salt works had been reduced to two, each containing five large pans of wrought iron. The Nantwich salt industry was practically moribund in 1849, but some twenty-five tons per week were produced by one maker until 1856, which is the last year in which salt was made in the district. In 1891 a company was registered for the purpose of acquiring property in Nantwich and manufacturing salt from brine, but the necessary financial support was not forthcoming and the project was abandoned. The decline of the Nantwich salt industry is ascribed in Poole’s _History of Cheshire_ (1778) to various causes, including the frequent destruction by fire of the works in the town--“fourteen of which in the memory of persons living lately, having been destroyed in one day”; to the discovery and exploitation of new salt springs in adjacent localities; and to the superior advantages in the matter of accessibility which were possessed by Northwich and Winsford. Northwich, described by the Welsh as Hellath-du, became the chief of the Cheshire salt towns in the seventeenth century, and its output of brine is still greater than that of any other district. In 1605, Northwich had 449 leads, against 642 leads at Middlewich and 1,296 leads at Nantwich, but the comparative superiority of the brine pumped at Nantwich over that of her rivals is demonstrated by the relative amount of boiling required to precipitate the salt. In Northwich, the annual expenditure for wood fuel was £2,056; Middlewich, with nearly one-third more leads, consumed wood fuel to the amount of £1,435 yearly; while Nantwich, working twice as many leads as Middlewich, and nearly three times the number operated at Northwich, had an annual wood bill of only £1,728.