The River Salwarpe is a 20.4 miles (32.8 km) long river in Worcestershire, England. It is a left bank tributary of the River Severn, which it joins near Hawford.[1][2]
The Salwarpe is formed by the confluence of the Battlefield and Spadesbourne Brooks in Bromsgrove, it then passes Stoke Prior, Upton Warren, Wychbold, Droitwich.[1] Downstream of Droitwich, it passes Salwarpe, and then meets the River Severn, near Hawford.[2]
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.[3][4]
Tributaries include the Elmbridge, Hadley and Hen brooks.[1][2]
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 of 184 square kilometres (71 sq mi) to the gauging station yielded an average flow of 1.35 cubic metres per second (48 cu ft/s).[5] The highest river level recorded at the station occurred in January 1960 with a height of 2.69 metres (8 ft 10 in), giving a corresponding flow of 39 cubic metres per second (1,400 cu ft/s).[6]
The Salwarpe catchment upstream of the station has an average annual rainfall of 666 millimetres (26.2 in) and a maximum altitude of 294 metres (965 ft) at Beacon Hill, in Lickey Hills Country Park at its north-eastern edge. Land use is primarily agricultural arable and grassland.[7]
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