28 Mr. A. B. Northcote on the Brine-springs of Worcestershire. 



in Worcestershire, the deposits, although large, do not appear 

 to be on so gigantic a scale ; the whole depth of the rocks con- 

 stituting the matrix has been estimated at upwards of 600 feet ; 

 and from some observations published by Sir Charles Hastings 

 some years since, on the sections disclosed by the sinkings at 

 Stoke Prior, tbe layers of salt in this region vary from mere 

 veins to deposits of more than 30 feet in thickness*. 



The brine-springs of Droitwich are stated by Sir C. Hastings 

 to have been in use in the time of the Romans ; but the exist- 

 ence of deposits of rock-salt does not appear to have been sus- 

 pected until about thirty years ago, when a person acquainted 

 with the features of the salt district of Cheshire, upon examining 

 the geological peculiarities of the marls at Stoke Prior, a place 

 nearly four miles to the N.E. of Droitwich, gave it as his 

 opinion that rock-salt would be found there in sufficient quan- 

 tity to make the working profitable. Shafts were accordingly 

 sunk, and both salt and brine found : of tbe latter they speedily 

 availed themselves, but I am not aware that the rock-salt has at 

 any period been quarried, as in Cheshire ; probably the extent 

 of the deposits found on sinking the shafts did not warrant such an 

 undertaking, or perhaps the abundance of the issuing salt-spring 

 presented a more immediately available and less expensive source 

 of the desired substance. At both places (Stoke and Droitwich) 

 a shaft of considerable diameter is sunk and lined with an iron 

 casing ; in this the pumps which remove the brine and convey it 

 to the reservoirs are fitted, and from the bottom of tbis upper 

 tube a narrower pipe is carried down to a considerable depth, 

 until, in fact, it reaches the subterranean brine chamber. The 

 depth of the iron casing at Droitwich is 150 feet, that of the boring 

 below 25 feet; and so abundant is tbe supply of brine, that if 

 the pumps cease working, the shaft is speedily filled to within 

 9 feet of the surface. At Stoke the supply appears now to be 

 equally inexhaustible, although I believe that in former years it 

 failed; but the present proprietor has bored deeper than his 

 predecessors, and has by means of a shaft 225 feet deep, and a 

 boring of 348 feet more, succeeded in breaking through the 

 drier and more superficial deposits, and has no doubt penetrated 

 a larger and better supplied reservoir than had previously been 

 opened. 



The brine, thus pumped out of the pits as fast as it is supplied, 

 is treated at both places in a precisely similar manner; it is 

 conveyed by pipes directly from the pumps into large but shal- 

 low reservoirs, which act as feeders to the numerous pans in 

 which the evaporation is carried on. These pans vary in length 

 from 60 to 100 feet, and are about 20 feet broad and 18 inches 

 * Murchison's Silurian System, vol. i. p. 31. 



