THE DROITWICH BARGE CANAL a short history by Max Sinclair.

For Centuries from Roman times the Droitwich salt producers struggled to transport their blocks of salt to the markets all over the British Isles. Roads became impassable after rain and the River Salwarpe although heavily used (Roman for Salt warping or haulage) was unreliable in summer and winter. in 1762 the salt company proprietors approached James Brindley a brilliant millwright to seek help. He was occupied with the Duke of Bridgewater’s Manchester canal but in 1768 started working to obtain the necessary Act of Parliament and survey the route. Much of his work was experimental with wide locks having self closing gates, mud holes for dredging and self closing flood gates in the event of the large Salwarpe embankment collapsing. When work started with gangs of ‘navies’ digging good progress was made under the direction of Brindleys assistant John Priddey except when the Bricklayers at Ladywood went on strike because they were ‘ill used’. In 1771 the first square rigged sailing trows arrived in the town with twenty tons of coal and there were great celebrations.
Over the years trade grew remarkably and the canal was improved to allow seventy foot by fourteen foot barges to carry sixty tons of salt to the Severn Estuary and far beyond, returning with coal, wheat, and timber. Trade continued until new methods of production near Bromsgrove made Droitwich salt uneconomical, the last barge, carrying hay ricks for the army in France left in 1916.
The system was abandoned in 1939 but in 1959 I started an Inland Waterways Association campaign for restoration following success at Stratford on Avon. After years of bureaucratic sabotage a Trust was formed in 1973 and hundreds of volunteers worked to dredge 300’000 tons of silt with their own railway and rebuild five of the eight locks. After further setbacks a consortium working with British Waterways are planning to complete the restoration. Reopening the canal will be a massive boost for the tourist trade in and around Droitwich.

R.M.Sinclair

Email: thebutty@evemail.net

Above Porters Mill near Worcester.

The Droitwich Barge Canal sailing Trows were restricted to a maximum cargo of about 60 tons by the 5 foot 6inch depth of the Lock cills. For many years before and after the turn of the last century Tom Cartwright, and his son Tom, in his white corduroy trousers, with their donkeys Nellie and Jack worked the canal using the Salt Union narrow boat ‘Three Brothers’. They were employed to operate as a ‘makeweight’ boat carrying 30-35 tons of Salt to Hawford Lock where it was transhipped by shovel and wheelbarrow into a trow.
The addition of an extra 30 odd tons at the River Severn made the journey to Gloucester, Bristol, North Devon, South Wales, the South Coast and French Ports more economical.
The photograph shows the ‘Three Brothers’ returning empty up Lock 4 just above Porters Mill in the 1900’s.In the lock is a barge or ‘cob’ boat used as a tender to the Trows and towed behind them on voyages. Lying in the boat is a broken sweep,the twenty foot long oar used to row the Trows into harbours when the wind failed.In the 1970’s when the salt workers cottages in the Vines were being repaired this relic of the canal age was found propping up a leakey roof. Stamped with Isaac Harris’s name it was placed with the Trusts records at our Hampton Road office and appeared with Nick Yarwood the Canals Manager in the local newspapers. Max

Nick Yarwood outside the late Isaac Harris’s cottage in Droitwich, Worcester. with the broken sweep and the present owner.

The Droitwich Trow “Henry”.

The Droitwich Trow “Henry” alongside a salt works. The great iron pans of boiling brine are to the left under the ventilated roof. As the salt dried it was cast into blocks and dried out in the right hand building ready for the domestic market. Droitwich salt was the purest quality produced anywhere in the world. Max.

This was a response from Max Sinclair, to a query regarding walking along the Barge Canal.

Canal Walks guide.

According to the previous vicar at Salwarpe the cauldron in the churchyard was “something to do with the canal”. I don’t think it was lead which was used to fix all the lock iron pins,as it would have been unwieldy, most likely just for boiling hot water, porridge making, or washing.It has all the appearance of being made at Ironbridge Dale Foundry who supplied all the iron used on the canal.
Salwarpe
Descend Jacobs Ladder to the mill where the brick structure is the remains of the flash lock used for centuries of navigation by salt trows and at the end by the barges carrying the millions of bricks used in the canal structures.
At the Salwarpe Court and Hill End swing bridges there is in the bed of the canal the large wooden gates 15ft wide by 6ft high built in the 1770’s and well preserved by the salt water. One of Brindleys features, if the big embankment to Ladywood built from the soil dug out of the Salwarpe cutting burst the gates were supposed to rise or be pulled up with chains by the lengthman. Unfortunately the gates were built with the open panels on top and quickly filled with mud making lifting impossible. The swing bridges, or sway bridges to Brindley, turned on Dale (Coalbrookdale) cast turn tables using iron rollers, the first recorded use in the world.
(A word of warning to canal engineers, when Brindley built a soil embankment across fields he didn’t remove the turf, after the spectacular burst on the Bridgewater Canal at Daresbury which blew the embankment away the turf was found rolled up like a carpet.)
The brick old Ombersley road bridge is called Wheelers Bridge after the farming family who lived in the large house which is now the RAFA Club headquarters. The large Chawson basin, at present silted up, was used for overnight mooring of trows and unloading of wheat for the many Salwarpe mills.Just possible some interesting boats may be under here.
The field on the north side of the canal is called Navigation Meadow, used for spreading canal dredgings and is Trust property, the next field north was Lower Wharfe Meadow,where trows on the Salwarpe berthed.
The Armco tube structure replaces the two railway bridges which were condemned after inspection by divers in iron boots and great helmets.Unfortunately British Rail were grudging about the work, they wanted to make a solid embankment, until I persuaded the Council to insist on a navigable structure.Unfortunately they didn’t believe the canal would open and only made it 9ft 6inches wide. Hopefully the brine will corrode the structure and it will have to be replaced.
On the site of the Droitwich Boxing Club by Hampton Road there used to be a boat house containing the steam boat Coronation used for tourist trips, nice to see it back, I have a suitable steam engine and boiler.
For years the canal from Droitwich was used as a linear sewage works called a Passaveer Ditch which filled with reeds was meant to purify the sewage. When it failed with appalling smells the Council gave the canal to the Droitwich Canal Trust to sort out, with the Gas Works site which was a poisonous mess of Arsenic, gas tar and other horrors.
I hope this will help for starters. Max

Salt Stream at Droitwich.

South of Droitwich.

The Droitwich Salt Stream
As the earth was being formed land masses moved and were covered by the sea. The British Isles emerged after a long inundation when climate change evaporated the water. A large crescent shaped block of salt stretching from Wells in Somerset, up through Bristol , the Midlands into Cheshire and containing millions of tons of the hard mineral was covered by glacial deposits. Where these were shallow, as in Droitwich , underground brine streams reached the surface and still continually erode away the salt causing land movement and subsidence.
When the brine industry was actively pumping for salt production there was considerable movement and Droitwich buildings regularly collapsed. Although closure of the Worcestershire Industry has considerably reduced movement it still occurs along the line of the Brine streams as recorded by Johnson Poole and Bloomer Ltd of Dudley in their reports.
Clearly visible south of Droitwich and north of Upton Warren the fascinating shapes created are visible.
South of Pulley Lane, near the Copcut Elm pub I have recorded some of this land movement.

Salt Lake.

The large brine filled lake, known as a Flash, is surrounded with Norfolk Reeds but hides a deadly secret.Totally submerged is a large timber framed Manor House which sank in the 19th Century without trace but is no doubt perfectly preserved.
Great care should be exercised when walking in this area as holes can open up at any time. The local farmer told us about cows he had lost, and one remarkable story about a cow that was missing for several days and was then recovered from a hole where it had survived on the grass which had fallen with it. Max

Brindles Sideweir.

Using his water milling experience Brindley devised sideweirs and byewashes to keep the canal at a constant depth.
The canal on the left when up to level flows through the arches, which stop surface floating debris,and holds at the weir level. After heavy rain the excess water flows over the weir and down through the arch to the River Salwarpe. The weir was restored by a Waterway Recovery Group of volunteers. Max

Lobster Pot weir under construction.

Droitwich Barge Canal locks.

When James Brindley designed the Droitwich Barge Canal he, like his contemporary builders, did not have total confidence in mass brickwork. He incorporated a timber frame in to the structure to anchor it back to the bank behind. Old local Churches have timber lintels in the brickwork, and the City Guildhall has quite a lot of timber, this was not to save bricks which were cheap, but to spread the load. My late brothers house at Norgrove Court, Bentley is reputed to be one of Britain’s first all brick houses.
When we started restoration and removed the hundreds of tons of silt it was discovered that large areas of the facing brickwork were softened by winter frosts and had to be removed.
Bricks made at Salwarpe were not fired to high temperatures and were of a poor quality.
At Porters Mill Lock the house residents have been running their sewage into the ground behind the lock wall for over sixty years and now the frame has collapsed and the wall is falling inwards. No doubt their insurance company will fund the restoration.
In the 1850’s the locks were extended at the top end. here the brickwork is excellent and holds the structure solidly.
All the lower lock gates are tapered and lean downstream from the top, this was Brindleys method of creating a self closing gate. Never having created a structure of this size he built a lock in his garden at New Hall, Staffordshire, but sadly it was destroyed by developers.
The Droitwich Locks are a historical monument to the brilliance of Brindley. Max

Brindleys site office.

This is where they all started, this lovely building was James Brindley and the Duke of Bridgewater’s site office to oversee the construction of the Bridgewater Canal. To the right the canal ran into the coal mines for many miles to load coal straight into the boats which were called ‘starvationers’because their ribs showed. To the left went to Manchester where the price of coal came tumbling down when the boats started. The water is blood red from the iron ochre’s in the tunnels but the local council is trying to clean it up after two centuries, so another piece of history will be lost. ‘Spitfire’and ‘Vesta’ were on their way to Manchester, Wigan, Blackburn Skipton and Leeds, Then to the Trent at Keadby and back up through Nottingham Burton Birmingham and back toWorcester.

In Skipton they wouldn’t believe we came from Worcester and turned out in crowds to see us, a lovely Yorkshire

welcome. Max

Ladywood Lock Bridge.

Ladywood Lock Bridge was a typical Brindley structure built to carry the local horse drawn traffic. When 40 ton lorries started using it the Council Highway Engineers became worried. It was a very steep hump back structure which the local youth could ‘Fly’ across.
It was decided to demolish it and infill the canal with a small culvert.In the 1960’s Nick Grazebrook and I arranged a meeting with Mr Thomson the Chief Engineer and we persuaded him to build a raised concrete raft which would give us full navigation height and width. We took advantage of the meeting to have the Body Brook under the M5 culvert design enlarged to give Narrow Boat dimensions.
It was remarkable that Brindleys simple brick spring arch bridge safely carried enormous loads. Max

Salwarpe Culvert.

A brook flows under the canal through the Salwarpe Embankment. The flow can be considerable at times. After two centuries the bricks were crumbling and we decided to hold a Waterway Recovery Group summer work camp. The structure was opened up, not before time, and new abutments built. A raft of old bakery plastic trays was constructed to keep the workers feet dry. New walls were cast and a slab roof, both ends were rebricked in keeping with the old work. On the left a brick drain leads up to the bed of the canal which is sealed with a wooden plug. Lowering water levels at Ladywood Lock reveals the plug and a chain,out of the sight of vandals. The workers became known as The Canal Mining Group. Max

In the 1980’s a derelict Springer built barge was purchased by the

Canals Trust and restored as a floating restaurant to raise funds for

the restoration. After the initial burst of enthusiasm the regular

running of events fell to the same three already overworked volunteers

physically restoring the canal in their spare time and the project

failed, with the boat mysteriously disappearing. Max

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