The River Salwarpe is a long river in

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

, England. It is a left bank tributary of the

River Severn , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

, which it joins near

Hawford Hawford is a hamlet in Worcestershire, England. It falls within two parishes; North Claines and Ombersley and Doverdale in the outer suburbs of Worcester about 3 miles from the city centre. It is bisected by the River Salwarpe, the Droitwich - ...

Course

The Salwarpe is formed by the confluence of the Battlefield and Spadesbourne Brooks in Bromsgrove, it then passes Stoke Prior,

Upton Warren Upton Warren is a village and civil parish in the Wychavon district, in Worcestershire, England. The village is situated just off the A38 road between Bromsgrove and Droitwich Spa, and on the River Salwarpe. In the 2001 census, the parish, whic ...

Wychbold Wychbold is a village in the Wychavon district of Worcestershire. The village is situated on the A38 road, A38 between Droitwich Spa and Bromsgrove, and by Junction 5 of the M5 motorway. The first records of Wychbold suggest that it was of great ...

Droitwich Droitwich Spa (often abbreviated to Droitwich ) is an historic spa town in the Wychavon district in northern Worcestershire, England, on the River Salwarpe. It is located approximately south-west of Birmingham and north-east of Worcester. The ...

. Downstream of Droitwich, it passes

Salwarpe Salwarpe is a small village and civil parish in the Wychavon district of Worcestershire, England, less than two miles south west of Droitwich, but in open country. The name is also spelled Salwarp, and in the time of John Leland was recorded as S ...

, and then meets the

River Severn , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

, near

Andrew Yarranton Andrew Yarranton (1619–1684) was an important English engineer in the 17th century who was responsible for making several rivers into navigable waterways. Biography He was born at Astley, just south of the town of Stourport-on-Severn in Worce ...

attempted unsuccessfully to make it navigable in the 1660s, but in the 21st century a stretch of the river in Droitwich was canalized to link the Barge and Junction sections of the

Droitwich Canal The Droitwich Canal is a synthesis of two canals in Worcestershire, England; the Droitwich Barge Canal and the Droitwich Junction Canal. The Barge Canal is a broad canal which opened in 1771 linking Droitwich Spa to the River Severn at Hawford ...

. Tributaries include the Elmbridge, Hadley and Hen brooks.

Hydrology

The flow of the Salwarpe has been measured in its lower reaches at Harford Hill since 1958. The long-term record shows that the

catchment A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

of to the

gauging station A stream gauge, streamgage or stream gauging station is a location used by hydrologists or environmental scientists to monitor and test terrestrial bodies of water. Hydrometric measurements of water level surface elevation ("stage") and/or volu ...

yielded an average flow of . The highest river level recorded at the station occurred in January 1960 with a height of , giving a corresponding flow of . The Salwarpe catchment upstream of the station has an average annual rainfall of and a maximum altitude of at Beacon Hill, in

Lickey Hills Country Park Lickey Hills Country Park is a country park in England. It is 10 miles (16 kilometres) south west of Birmingham and 24 miles (39 kilometres) north east of Worcester. The park is situated just south of Rednal and close to Barnt Green. It is hal ...

at its north-eastern edge. Land use is primarily agricultural arable and grassland.

Water quality

The

Environment Agency The Environment Agency (EA) is a non-departmental public body, established in 1996 and sponsored by the United Kingdom government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with responsibilities relating to the protection and enha ...

measure water quality of the river systems in England. Each is given an overall ecological status, which may be one of five levels: high, good, moderate, poor and bad. There are several components that are used to determine this, including biological status, which looks at the quantity and varieties of

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

angiosperm Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s and fish. Chemical status, which compares the concentrations of various chemicals against known safe concentrations, is rated good or fail. The water quality of the Salwarpe and its tributaries was as follows in 2016. The water quality of all the riverine waterbodies in the lower catchment have regressed from moderate in 2009 to poor in 2016. The two upper tributaries remained at moderate. Chemical quality is good in the Salwarpe and its four monitored tributaries.

References

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Droitwich Spa

1Salwarpe

Course

Hydrology

Water quality

See also

References