The second part of a story about a gentleman and his friend in 1850, travelling from Liverpool by train to Hartford.
They were heading for the Marston mine, which one of them had visited before. At the time, the Adelaide mine at Marston could be visited by the public.
It was also a massive underground area capable of holding dances, banquets, and functions as it was for Emperor Nicholas of Russia.
The Winsford salt mine has a massive void, but not in the same way as the Marston one.
An example of this form of underground entertainment can still be seen in Poland at the Wieliczka salt mine.
But back to our two heroes who have now been handed over to a foreman for a tour of the Marston Duke/Adelaide mine.
The year is 1850, and they are given a guided tour. The foreman stated that a treat would have been prepared for them if they had given their visit a prior warning.
He continued that when a Mr Canning visited about 20 years earlier, they lit 15,000 candles and the effect as they reflected from the sparkling salt walls was spectacular.
Their guide promised to make the blue lights they had purchased go as far as possible.
The bucket was prepared, and the previous couple who were waiting stepped into it with their blue lights.
They held the rope tightly as they were lowered into the mine. In a short time, the empty bucket returned, and our two men climbed into it.
The descent was pleasant, and no inconvenience of dripping moisture and the like would be found using a coal mine shaft.
The light was faint, but lowering the candle to the floor, they saw it was dry and covered in a sort of dirty dust.
The pillars that had been left to support the mine and the roof sparkled as the poor light from their candles reflected from them.
He was envious as he used his weak candle to appreciate the sparkling magnificence that Mr Canning must have enjoyed with the addition of 15,000 candles.
When he made this observation to the guide, he told them to wait a minute.
He poured a couple of handfuls of the blue light onto the floor and set fire to it. The effect was instantaneous and stunning.
The gigantic columns of rock salt, with floor and roof of the same mineral, glittered in the sudden light, and the patterns of their elongated shadows fell behind them to a distance of 20 or 30 yards and seemed to climb up the massive columns of glittering salt.
The effect did not last long, and soon the stygian blackness returned, broken only by each individual with his candle. Each person seemed to be a circle of hazy twilight wandering about in the utter gloom.
The miners did not work that day, but a few came down to demonstrate their working method.
The most notable working environment was far better for salt workers than coal miners as they could walk upright whilst chopping the rock salt.
No fear of explosion, and the ventilation was good. There was no need to crawl on all ours or lie naked in a tight tunnel in the coal seam hacking at the roof.
No, our man thought this was a far better place to work than a coal mine.
He advised anyone with time to spare to visit the Marston salt mine, But he suggested they take down as many blue lights as possible to obtain the full effect (blue lights could be described as the old-fashioned flash powder used in early photographic flash guns).
As already explained, the mine is no more, having flooded and collapsed in 1928, killing just two pit ponies.
Water from underground streams had entered the mine dissolving the salt pillars that supported it.
The void collapsed, causing the nearby canal to breach and the flash in Ollershaw Lane to be formed.
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