Baswich

Baswich is an estate on the south eastern side of Stafford. It is part of the civil parish of Berkswich and is located in Staffordshire, England. It is situated next to Weeping Cross, which is also part of the civil parish.

Baswich amenities are a local Co-op store, an independent hairdressers, and Berkswitch CofE primary school (ST17 0LY). The majority of Baswich is private housing.

Prior to 1851, the terms Berkswich and Baswich were used interchangeably, to refer to a larger area which included the townships of Baswich and Brockton. At that time, it comprised an area of 6,200 acres (2,500 ha), and had a population of 1448. Baswich township consisted of an area of 1,600 acres (650 ha) and included the hamlets of Radford, Weeping-Cross, Walton and Milford, but there was no village with the name of Baswich. Holy Trinity Church was isolated from any of the hamlets, as there was no housing in its immediate vicinity. The two townships became part of Stafford Poor Law Union, as a result of the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834. The Union was created on 28 September 1836, and provided centralised poor relief for 19 parishes. Baswich elected one of the 27 Guardians to the controlling Board, who erected a new workhouse on Marston Road, to the north of Stafford, in 1837-8.

The building of housing near the church is relatively recent, as Baswich Lane is shown on maps in 1938 running through open fields, with the church as the only building. By 1954, there were some houses on either side of the lane, but by the time the 1973 map was published, the present pattern of housing estates covering most of the area bounded by the canal was established.

The area occupied by the business park has been an industrial site since around 1900. There is no evidence of activity on the 1891 map, but by 1901 a salt works had been established to the west of Baswich Lane, with a large building, a reservoir, and a conveyor to railway sidings. Salt deposits had been discovered on Stafford Common in 1881, when the Corporation made trial borings to search for a water supply. From 1891 it supplied the Brine Baths by Green Bridge, which became the Royal Brine Baths after a visit by Princess Mary, who later became the wife of King George V. From 1893, the Stafford Salt and Alkali Company began pumping brine from 360 feet (110 m) below the Common and processing it. The Baswich Works was the company's second works, opened in 1894, and it was fed with brine by a 2-mile (3.2 km) pipeline, which ran from the Common through the town and along the towpath of the River Sow Navigation, supplying the Brine Baths on the way. To keep up with demand, the works was replaced by another works, built before the Second World War. A new vacuum plant was added in 1948. Later maps show the new salt works to the east of Baswich Lane, where more extensive railway sidings had been constructed. A large silt pond to the north of the site is evident, and the original salt works had become a pre-cast concrete works. In 1970, following a protracted legal battle, brine extraction was stopped, because of the subsidence that it caused. By 1990, the salt works site was occupied by Lodgefield caravan park, now a mobile home park. The concrete works has since been redeveloped as a business park.

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