Droitwich Spa town centre
52° 16’ 01.71” N
2° 09’ 00.60” W
elev. 42m
Field Report
The town can trace its history back to the Anglo Saxon
period. Throughout its long history it prospered as a centre of salt
production. The route of the A38 trunk road follows the old salt road. The town
does have an attractive old quarter, centred on a crossroads. Now it mainly
houses restaurants, solicitors offices and the like. The central shopping area
has moved a few hundred yards away, housed in a redevelopment dating, by the
look of it from the early 70s. Why large scale planning always seems to result
in somewhere dispiriting, I am not sure. Maybe it's those unexpected
juxtaposition, coincidental and surprising differences of style and scale which
give places a unique character. You can't plan serendipity. Droitwich centre
really does suffer from planning blight. Pleasant enough but soulless.
Not that the city fathers were unappreciative of their
history. There's one of those 'toned down' semi modernist municipal concrete
murals, so beloved of the post-war town planner. It shows an eighth century Mercian king granting the town a charter to produce salt. There is even evidence that the industry goes even further to Roman times.
Across the the square, opposite the modern public library,
is a more recent sculpture in a more realist style which commemorates the
hard labour of the salt workers, men, women and children. Overall it is well
done, powerful in a slightly conservative way, a noble monument to the ordinary
working people who enriched Droitwich over the centuries.
There is one strange miscalculation however. The female
worker is depicted bare-breasted. Now there is lots of public statuary that
contains nudity. These usually evoke some personified idea, like Liberty or
Victory, and hark back to a classical tradition. The problem is, in a work of
social realism, introducing a nude figure is to mix both genre and register. It
just looks odd, as if the artist was invoking a 'grand manner' out of kilter
with the work's intention. Overall though it was good to see recent investment
in public art.
Lido Park. next to where we had parked the van, featured
public statuary of an altogether more amusing tenor. Over the past few years
there has been a fashion for tree stump whittling. Local councils, faced with
the task of removing tree stumps from the local park have taken to
commissioning wood sculptors to come and 'transform' them. The results are
almost always kitch, but rarely so hilarious as the Lido Park 'Diver'.
Droitwich's very own wood-whittling Rodin decided to celebrate the local
outdoor swimming pool by carving a diver in wood. The result is a 3D paean to
Hockney's 'Big Splash' that could be renamed the 'Big Clunk'.
The strangeness of Albion. I rest my case.
Sent from my iPhone 11.4.2014
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