Droitwich Lido History

Background History

The whole history of Droitwich is bound up with salt. The town exists because of the huge brine lake beneath it, which has been tapped from ancient times. Salt represented wealth as it preserved food before the age of refrigeration. Roman soldiers were paid in salt giving us the word salary.

Salt extraction in Droitwich continued through the middle ages. It was transformed in the 19th century when entrepreneur John Corbett refined the 'evaporation process', the method used to extract the salt from the brine. Corbett's technical improvements brought prosperity to the town and great personal wealth.

A typical Victorian, Corbett seized the opportunity both to increase his own fortune and benefit the town philanthropically by exploiting the known therapeutic effects of salt water on rheumatic conditions. He built the first Brine Baths and Droitwich became Droitwich Spa.

Early in the 1930's the directors of Droitwich Spa Limited (owners of the Norbury House Hotel, the Brine Baths and Winter Gardens complex and Droitwich Golf Club, amongst other assets) had the inspiration of building an open-air salt-water lido set in its own extensive parkland. The distinguished firm of landscape and buildings architects T H Mawson And Sons was engaged to design the pool and buildings. Recently there has been a reawakening of interest in Thomas Mawson and his company's work. Mawson himself was a major figure in the late Victorian-Edwardian Arts and Crafts movement, and the company’s work most influential and looked upon with much respect. Thomas Mawson himself was primarily a landscape architect, leaving building design to his eldest son Edward Prentice Mawson (most likely the designer of the lido complex). The company's commissions included the Winter Gardens in Malvern and Droitwich, a superb city plan for Calgary in Canada, and the Peace Palace Gardens in The Hague. It was, therefore, a tremendous coup for Droitwich to gain the company's services for the creation of it’s new lido.