Salt King with the Midas touch

He was a remarkable Victorian figure who brought considerable prosperity to mid-Worcestershire in vastly expanding the salt works at Stoke, near Droitwich, and in amassing a personal fortune which he dispensed generously among a whole range of charities and good causes in this county and nationwide.

He also had built one of the architectural gems of the Worcestershire landscape - the French-style mansion on the outskirts of Droitwich, originally named Impney but now known as Chateau Impney.

John Corbett died at his Impney home in late April, 1901, at the age of 84, and such was the widespread regard for him that Berrow's Worcester Journal devoted nearly half of a broad-sheet page - more three than columns - to his obituary.

It said of him: "Mr John Corbett's prominence in public and commercial life and his exceptional munificence to medical and other charities and to public improvements made his name a household word in the county.

"He was one of the 'kings of commerce' who, starting with no advantage of position or training, made their own way by ability and industry to the possession of great wealth and to the highest positions in the industrial world - in Mr Corbett's case, it may be added, to the highest position in the esteem of men, won not only by great munificence but by his constant and thoughtful interest in the welfare of others."

He was born near Brierley Hill - then South Staffordshire, now West Midlands - in 1817, the son of a canal carrier whose boats plied the waterways between the Midlands and London, Liverpool and Manchester. John left school at 10 and helped to navigate one of his father's boats from Brierley Hill to London.

As a young man, he became a partner in his father's firm, trading as Corbett & Sons, but later sought new horizons and made the change which was to transform his life.

At 28, he joined the management of the Stoke Prior Alkali & Salt Works, then ailing and losing money, and was soon to buy the company outright. Despite the failure of others to make the salt industry a commercial success, John Corbett was in no way undaunted, although coming to it as a stranger.

He risked everything in having the old works dismantled and in developing an extensive new "model" plant in its place and, by much improved methods, salt production was raised from 26,000 tons to a staggering 200,000 tons a year.

This brought increasing wealth to John Corbett but he passed on many of the benefits to his employees, dispensing with cheap female labour, offering men family breadwinner wages and providing comfortable homes for his work people.

He also had schools, a club, a lecture theatre and a medicines dispensary built for his workforce. Little wonder, therefore, that he never had a strike among them.

In 1874, John Corbett became the Independent Liberal MP for Droitwich Borough and represented the constituency and its successor Mid-Worcestershire until 1892, though he switched to the Unionist Party in 1886.

Over the years, he was a director of most of the nation's canal companies including that for the Worcester & Birmingham Canal, and was also on the boards of several other organisations.

John Corbett was always very far from miserly with his money, becoming a leading Victorian philanthropist.

He donated significant sums to the London hospitals, Birmingham University and to national charities, and even had a promenade built for the seaside village of Towyn, North Wales, where he had a country estate.

He gave a mansion house, estate and moneys for the building of Corbett Hospital at Stourbridge and, as a devote churchman, endowed significant sums for the building or restoration of churches, especially in the Midlands. In Worcestershire, his generosity was equally abounding.

He built the Worcestershire Hotel and St Andrew's Brine Baths at Droitwich, to bring visitors to the Spa and paid for the construction of Salters Hall for the benefit of the townsfolk.

In Worcester, he was a constant benefactor to the Royal Infirmary and the Royal Albert Orphanage, gave a big contribution towards the Victorian restoration of the Cathedral, and donated £1,000 towards the £42,000 cost of building the Victoria Institute - a total raised mainly by public subscription..

Memory Lane has previously highlighted the sad fact that though John Corbett enjoyed something of a Midas touch, he was not so lucky in love, Chateau Impney being a monument to his heartbreak.

At the age of 39, he married Hannah Eliza O'Meara, who he had met in Paris, where she was living with her parents. Her father was of Irish extraction and her mother French.

John and Hannah went on to have six children, but she became more and more nostalgic for her beloved France.

In a most extravagant bid to keep her love and make her happy, John had the Impney mansion built, totally in the French-style - a venture which in the 1870s cost the massive sum of £247,000. He also brought in experts to create lavishly landscaped grounds with ornamental lakes, waterfalls and steams.

Tragically, the grandiose gesture failed in its prime aim. Hannah refused to live at Impney when everything was completed, and left Droitwich and Corbett to live in exile in one of his properties at Towyn.

After John Corbett's death, Impney went through a number of different ownerships and uses but was rescued from decline and disrepair in 1945, by hotelier Ralph Edwards, who returned the mansion to its original glory and appropriately added Chateau to its name.