Qualla: Droitwich Spa

Droitwich Spa: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is salt under Droitwich, vast quantities of it, and for two thousand years that is what defined the place. The natural brine that bubbles up through the River Salwarpe is ten times saltier than seawater, fully saturated with sodium chloride - rivalled only, in the whole world, by the Dead Sea. The Romans set up a town here called Salinae and connected it to half their British road network so the salt could move. The Anglo-Saxons fought over it. King John issued the town's charter on 1 August 1215 - the same tumultuous year he met the rebel barons at Runnymede to seal Magna Carta. And in the 19th century an industrialist named John Corbett turned the brine pits into a fashionable spa where Victorian patients floated in concentrated salt water as if on the Dead Sea itself.

Read more: Droitwich Spa on Qualla

Image: Chris Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Droitwich Spa: Salinae

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeff Gogarty, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Romans called the place *Salinae* - the salt-works - and they sited it at the crossroads of several Roman roads precisely because the salt had to move. Railway construction in 1847 uncovered Roman mosaic pavements still buried under the town. The name Droitwich is a layered o...

Read more: Droitwich Spa on Qualla

Image: Jeff Gogarty | CC BY-SA 2.0

Droitwich Spa: The Brine Pits of Vines Park

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CaveyCoUk, CC BY 3.0. Three pits in what is now Vines Park supplied the medieval and early-modern salt trade. Upwich, the deepest at 30 feet, was the most productive. Netherwich was 18 feet deep. Middlewich, between them, fell into disuse because the other two drew its brine. The peculiar property of ...

Read more: Droitwich Spa on Qualla

Image: CaveyCoUk | CC BY 3.0

Droitwich Spa: Corbett's Salt Empire and Floating Cure

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo by geni sculpture by John McKenna, CC BY-SA 4.0. John Corbett, the man who industrialised Droitwich's salt, was born in 1817 the son of a canal-boat captain. He worked his way up to ownership of the Stoke Prior Salt Works near Bromsgrove, expanded into Droitwich, and by the 1860s controlled about half of British salt production...

Read more: Droitwich Spa on Qualla

Image: Photo by geni sculpture by John McKenna | CC BY-SA 4.0

Droitwich Spa: 198 kHz

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Nienhuis, original photograph of the Droitwich transmitting aerials at Wychbold, uploaded to the Commons by Furfur, Public domain. Three miles north-east of Droitwich, at Wychbold, stands one of the most distinctive radio transmitting stations in the world. The Droitwich transmitter was built in the early 1930s to broadcast the BBC's national longwave service on 200 kHz (now 198 kHz). It was sited here becau...

Read more: Droitwich Spa on Qualla

Image: Bob Nienhuis, original photograph of the Droitwich transmitting aerials at Wychbold, uploaded to the Commons by Furfur | Public domain

Droitwich Spa: Salt Town in the Modern Age

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ocdp, CC0. The salt industry is long gone. The last major works closed in 1972; what little salt is still produced in Britain comes from Cheshire. But Droitwich has kept its peculiar identity. The Droitwich Canal, built by James Brindley in 1771 and abandoned in 1939, was painstakingly reop...

Read more: Droitwich Spa on Qualla

Image: Ocdp | CC0