Middlebere Plateway - History

History

Near contemporary accounts indicate that the line was built in 1805 and opened in 1806, and it is present on a map of 1811. On 16 August 1806, Fayle wrote to Wedgwood announcing the opening of the line and a reduction in the price of clay. The engineer was John Hodgkinson, who had worked with his cousin Benjamin Outram, a pioneering railway and canal engineer. Papers held in Corfe Castle Town Museum state that the contractor was named Willis. At the time the manager of the clay pits was Joseph Willis and tenant at Norden Farm, so this points to a possible "self build" by Fayle's men to John Hodgkinson's instructions.

Initially the railway served clay pits to the east side of the road from Wareham to Corfe Castle, but shortly thereafter it was extended under the road to serve clay workings on the other side of the road. There are two tunnels under the road, serving different workings. The northern tunnel carries a plaque on its east face reading BF 1807. The southern tunnel has a plaque on its west face Dated in 1848, but as the tunnel is shown on earlier tithe maps, that is believed to be a rebuilding date. Workshops and a weighbridge were built near New Line Farm to the east of the road and weathering beds were also located here; these were dumps of newly dug clay which had to weather for up to a year to allow the clay to break down to make it workable.

In about 1881 new pits were opened up at Norden to the south east of the New Line Farm works. New track was laid from near the workshop area to these pits, on a route planned to run alongside and to the west of the proposed Wareham to Swanage railway. When the London and South Western Railway line to Swanage was built, a standard gauge exchange siding was laid to allow clay to be transferred from the clay trucks to main-line trucks, but most of the clay continued to be hauled by horses to Middlebere Quay. At the same time a tunnel was provided under the main line railway for use by the plateway to the original workings.

In the early 1900s, the line to Norden clay works had been extended over the main line railway to serve clay pits on its western side. This line was extended across the Wareham to Corfe Castle road by a level crossing to serve further clay pits to the north east. However by this time the plateway's days were numbered. The channel at Middlebere was silting up, limiting the size of vessel that could approach the quay. The company already had a deeper-water quay at Goathorn on the southern shore of Poole Harbour, used for the export of clay from pits at nearby Newton.

The Middlebere Plateway was abandoned in about 1907, when it was replaced by Fayle's Tramway, which connected Fayle's clay works at Norden with their works at Newton and thence to Poole Harbour at Goathorn. Fayle's Tramway took over much of the plateway's trackbed in the Norden area, including the exchange siding and the bridge over the main line railway. However the plateway's main route to Middlebere Creek, and the tunnels under the railway and road were all abandoned.