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the parish are no fewer than three Baptist, one Independent, five Wesleyan Methodist, four Primitive Methodist, one Roman Catholic, one Plymouth Brethren, and one Reformed Methodist Chapels, providing accommodation for 3,450 worshippers. The Baptists have erected a fine building, with tower and spire, to hold 700 sittings.* Then there are district churches at Catshill and the Lickey, and mission churches at Sidemoor and Dodford. A flourishing Literary Institute, two or three banks, an excellent newspaper conducted by Mr. Palmer, a School of Art and many other schools, a rifle corps, all kinds of thrifty and benevolent institutions and almshouges; indeed the parish is much richer in charities than the majority of places, the last of any note being a legacy of £2,000 to the poor by the late James Holyoake, Esq. There is also a Burial Board and a Court for small debts. Lastly, the town has good markets and fairs, is in the centre of an important agricultural and manufacturing district, and is governed by a Local Board and Town Commissioners, fifteen in number, who have improved the drainage of the town by constructing a sewer down Worcester Street, which is 1,058 yards in length, and connected with the main sewer, whereby the greater part of the sewage of the town is now carried away to Charford; while the country district is taken care of by another Board, consisting of a dozen members. Perhaps the latest step towards improvement in the sanitary appliances of the town was the passing of an Act in a late session of Parliament for supplying Bromsgrove and Droitwich with water. The supply is to be taken from Pike's Pool and Spadesbourn Brook, which rises in the Lickey and passes through Bromsgrove on its way to the Salwarpe, which flows into the Severn near Worcester. The Local Government Act of 1858 had already been adopted here, and in 1846 an Act was passed for paving, cleansing, draining, and improving the town, and for better assessing

* Dissent secured an early footing in Bromsgrove, there being Baptist, Independent, and Quaker communities here in the seventeenth century.