DROITWICH, market town and municipal borough, Evesham parliamentary division, Worcestershire, England, 54 m. N.N.E. of Worcester, and 126 m. N.W. from London by the G.W.R. Pop. 4,553. It is served also by the L.M.S. railway. It stands on the river Salwarpe, a tributary of the Severn, being connected with the latter by canal. There are three parish churches, St. Andrew, St. Peter and St. Michael, of which the two first are fine old buildings in mixed styles, while St. Michael's is modern. The principal occupation is the manufacture of the salt obtained from the brine springs or wyches, to which the town probably owes its name and origin. The springs also give Droitwich a considerable reputation as a health resort. There are Royal Brine baths, St. Andrew's baths and a private bath hospital. Owing to the pumping of the brine there is a continual subsidence of the ground, detrimental to the buildings, and new houses are mostly built in the suburbs. In the pleasant well wooded district surrou*ding Droitwich the most noteworthy points are Hindlip Hall, 3 m. S., where (in a former mansion) conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot defied search for eight days (16o5) ; and Westwood, a fine hall of Elizabethan and Carolean date on the site of a Benedictine nunnery, 1 m. west of Droit wich, which offered a retreat to many Royalists during the Commonwealth. Area, 1,856 acres.
A Roman villa, with various relics, has been discovered here, but it is doubtful how far the Romans made use of the brine springs, which are also mentioned in several charters before the Conquest. At the time of the Domesday Survey all the salt springs belonged to the king, who received a yearly farm of f65, but the manor was divided between several churches and tenants in-chief. The burgesses of Droitwich (Wic, Salturic, Wich) are mentioned in the Domesday Survey. The town is first called a borough in the pipe roll of Henry II., but the burgesses did not receive their first charter until 1215, when King John demanded a fee-farm of £ r oo. The payment of the fee-farm gradually lapsed in the i8th century. In mediaeval times Droitwich was governed by two bailiffs and twelve jurats. Queen Mary granted the incorporation charter in 1554 under the name of the bailiffs and burgesses. James I. in 1625 granted fuller charter, which remained the governing charter until the Municipal Re form Act. King John's charter granted the burgesses a fair on the feast of SS. Andrew and Nicholas lasting for eight days, but Edward III. in 133o granted instead two fairs on the vigil and day of St. Thomas the Martyr and the vigil and day of SS. Simon and Jude. Queen Mary granted three new fairs, and James I. changed the market day from Monday to Friday.