Mitton, Pedmore, Rushock, Stour, Old Swindford, Stourbridge, and Warley Wigorn.

The first place which presents itself is

DROITWICH,

which lies about six miles from Worcester, and is a small straggling dirty looking town on the banks of the Salwarpe, in a low situation surrounded by small eminences. It is supposed by some to be the Salina of the Romans; and no doubt, was a populous town in the time of William the Conqueror, though by the returns of 1801, it appears to have only 139 houses, and a population of 1840 persons, chiefly employed in the salt-works. The subsequent monarchs had much property here, but King John granted it in fee farm to the burgesses for an annual rent of 1001. bestowing on them all privileges of toll, and exempting them from tolls and the performance of suit and service, &c.

The name has been supposed to come from Vicus, a street or village, from the Saxon wic, a mansion-or from wye, holy, the northern nations attributing great sacredness to waters naturally impregnated with salt. The addition of droit, is said by Camden to be synonymous to " legal," and to be also allusive to those pits which were kept open by the royal grant, when several of a weaker quality were stopped; he adds that this adjunct is not older than the time of Edward III. and was not in general use, until the reign of Mary. The town of Droitwich has always been remarkable for its loyalty through the pages of history; in its early times, it was indeed a royal town. In the civil wars, the burgesses signalized themselves much by their attachment to the cause of their monarch, who sent them a letter of thanks, which they for a long time preserved. Charles, also made this his headquarters in 1645, when his army besieged the rebels in Hawkesley House, on the north-side of Bromsgrove Lickey. Even in the reign of Henry VIII. this town must have been in some measure larger, though perhaps not superior, to what it is now. Leland says,

"From

1

"From Worcester I rode to the Wich by enclosed ground, havinge meetly good corn, sufficient wood, and good pasture, about six miles. The beauty of the town in a manner standith of one street. Yet there be many lanes besides. There is a meane church in the chiefe street, and there is once a week a meetly celebrate market. The town itself is somewhat foule and dirtye (when any raine falleth) with much carriage through the streets, being over ill paved, or not paved. I asked a saulter how many furnaces they had in all the 3 springes, he numbered them at 18 score, that is 360, saying that every one of them payed yearly to the kinge 6s. 8d. The people that be about the furnaces be very ill coloured." This description might indeed answer for the present day, and a stranger might suppose that the pavement had not been repaired since the days of Leland. The market of which he speaks, was then held near the George Inn, which is the house alluded to by the same writer, where he says, going out of the towne's end, I saw a fayre and tymbre house, longing to Mr. Newport." Since that time, however, a market-house was built of timber in the year 1628. It stands in the street leading to the canal, and is at present in rather a ruinous state. Friday is the market day, and the fairs are held on the 28th of October, and 21st of December, for linen cloth and hats. The church in the town is very old, and seems going to decay; and there was formerly dependant upon this church of St. Peter, a chapel erected on the bridge, through the middle of which, passed the high road leading to Bromsgrove, so that in an old MS.* in the British Museum, it is said that the cart-way lay through the church. In fact, the reading desk and pulpit were on one side of the road, whilst the congregation sat on the other; but the commissioners of the turnpike obtained leave from the Patron and Incumbent of St. Peter's, to remove it, on condition of their building a new one near it. This they did, but it is now in ruins. There is another church, on the cliff on the north side of the river, overlooking the town.

Ayscough's Catalogue, 1946.

There

There is a part of the town called Duderhill, which in Willis is mistakenly called Doddeshall; here was once a free chapel or hospital, dedicated to St. Mary, under the priory of Worcester, and containing a master and some poor brethren. There was also a house of friars, heremites of the order of St. Augustine founded by the Beauchamps, Earls of Warwick.

But Droitwich is most remarkable for its SALT-WORKS, which are as old as the year 816. At the Domesday Survey, shares of them were annexed to estates in the county, at the distance even of fifteen miles, and that in proportion to the wood which those estates afforded, as coals were then unknown as an article of fuel: and sometimes the wood was paid for in salt. The principal pits, indeed, belonged to the crown, and from the grant of King John of his pits to the burgesses, until the year 1689, the great proportion was monopolized by those grantees, whose pits in Upwich and Netherwich, gave them a very large annual income. About the close of the seventeenth century, however, a Mr. Steynor, a bold speculator, and well versed in the laws respecting landed property, determined to break through a system which he considered as unfounded either in equity or in reason, and he accordingly sunk some pits in his own ground. For this infringement of chartered rights, the corporation immediately commenced an action; their exclusive right, however, was set aside, and a verdict recorded, which stated that all persons in possession of landed property, not within the limits of the royal grant, had a legal right to sink pits, and to manufacture salt for their own pro fit, without loss or hindrance. Mr. Steynor, here spoken of, in this more fortunate period of his life, resided in the westeru skirts of the town, in a house which has the wreathed and ornamented chimnies of the time of Queen Elizabeth, with a court-yard before it, and which appears now to be turned into a farm-house; but he soon after shared the fate of most projectors, being ruined by lawsuits; and though the champion of public rights, was yet, after spending a large estate, obliged to depend upon parochial

allow

allowance for a subsistence; and his daughter was in 1777, a pauper of Claines parish.

In consequence of the beforementioned verdict, however, a great change took place in Droitwich; for the value of the chartered pits diminished so rapidly, that in 1725, they were worth nothing, in consequence also of a discovery of Sir Richard Lane, who having bored through the stratum of gypsum, or alabaster, which had hitherto formed the floor of the springs, was enabled to increase the quantity of brine to any necessary proportion. It is necessary to premise, that the great substratum of the vicinity of Droitwich seems to be a salt rock, which usually lies from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet below the level; on boring in any part, the salt springs are met with about one hundred and ten feet below the surface; the borer must then pass through about one hundred and thirty feet of gypsum, when the brine river of about twenty-two inches in depth is met with, after which, is a bed of salt rock hitherto unexplored.* Sir Richard had no sooner completed his perforation, than a stream of strong brine boiled up so suddenly, and with such a prodigious force, as to drown the workmen at the bottom of the pit; and his success was so complete, that the proprietors of the neighbouring lands pursued the same method, producing in a very short time a much greater quantity of the brine than could possibly be consumed in the manufacture. This has undoubtedly increased the quantity prepared for sale, and of course given more employ to the industrious; yet it is still to be lamented, that it was attended with the total destruction of the old pits, and consequently with the utter ruin of many families, and several charities also, which had their income secured under the charter.

Now, any person who has land in this district, may sink a pit, at the very moderate expense of fifty or sixty pounds sterling, VOL. XV. which

M

In a search for this brine river made a few years ago, the miners passed through four feet of mould, thirty-two of marl, forty of gypsum, a brine river of twenty-two inches, and seventy-five feet of gypsum in another stra tum, after which they came to the salt rock.

which will afford him brine enough to supply the whole demand; but even this expense is unnecessary, as for four or five pounds per annum, he may take as much brine as he pleases from any of the pits already sunk. The great expense, indeed, is the manufac ture; but the process is simple, being nothing more than putting a little common water at first in the pans to prevent the brine from burning to the bottom; then filling the pan with brine, and throwing in a small piece of resin about the size of a pea, in order to hasten the granulation. The salt, when boiling, forms its crystallizations on the surface; these fall to the bottom, and from thence are laded into baskets, permitted for some time to drain, and then put into stoves to harden the salt for use. Many experiments have been tried by chemists on this brine; the most useful perhaps, and the most simple, were those tried by Dr. Johnson, of Worcester, who ascertained that a bottle filled with brine, contained one pound, eleven ounces and a quarter of water, which, exposed to a heat of 70°, left a residuum of six ounces of salt; whilst the same quantity of fresh water only weighed one pound, seven ounces, and one quarter. More nicely conducted experiments, however, have shewn that this brine, like all others, contains several substances besides the Culinary Salt, or muriate of soda according to modern chemistry: these are in general sulphate of soda, and of magnesia, together with a muriate of lime, the latter of which, if not carefully extracted in the manufacture, is very liable to absorb moisture from the atmosphere. The two former are Glauber and Epsom Salts, and require no specific investigation here. Though England possesses many salt springs, there are none of equal strength with those of Droitwich; these latter holding in solution about one-fourth of salt, whilst the others, even when most strongly impregnated, do not yield more in general than one-ninth. With such a constant transport of the manufactured article, it is not surprising that many attempts have been made to diminish the expense of carriage of course it had long been a desirable object with those connected with the place, to open a communication with the Severn by water. As early as 1655, two speculators undertook to render