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 H ...

, 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 - W ...

Course

The Salwarpe is formed by the confluence of the Battlefield and Spadesbourne Brooks in

Bromsgrove Bromsgrove is a town in Worcestershire, England, about northeast of Worcester and southwest of Birmingham city centre. It had a population of 29,237 in 2001 (39,644 in the wider Bromsgrove/Catshill urban area). Bromsgrove is the main town in th ...

, it then passes Stoke Prior, Upton Warren, Wychbold, Droitwich. Downstream of Droitwich, it passes Salwarpe, 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 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 Hawfo ...

. 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, ...

of to the gauging station 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 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 en ...

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 chorda ...

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 ...

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

{{authority control Salwarpe Droitwich Spa Salwarpe 1Salwarpe

Course

Hydrology

Water quality

See also

References