Purbeck’s clay miners were truly railway pioneers. Nearly two decades before the opening of the Stockton to Darlington railway in 1825, the Middlebere Plateway was built here in Dorset for local clay producer, Benjamin Fayle. The Purbeck ball clay was loaded onto wagons that were then drawn by horses along the plateway down to Middlebere creek in Poole Harbour where the clay was loaded onto barges for onward transhipment to Poole quay and ultimately delivered to numerous destinations in Great Britian and Europe by ship. Although just 3.5 miles long, the plateway transformed the transportation process, enabling the producer to meet its contract to supply 20,000 tons of clay a year, much of it for Wedgwood and the potteries around Stoke on Trent in Staffordshire.
Plateways were one of the earliest forms of railways. The trucks used on the plateway had flangeless wheels. Instead, the flange was on the rails which were manufactured for the Middlebere plateway with a L-shaped cross-section in 3ft lengths. The rails were secured to stone sleepers either side of the track, using large iron nails driven into oak plugs inserted into the stones. Although they survived for many years, the horse-drawn plateways were eventually superseded by steam-hauled narrow-gauge railways in the mid 1800’s, however the Middlebere plateway lasted a hundred years, closing in 1906. Find out more about this in our next Railway 200 post.
Horse drawn clay transport via Middlebere plateway (Stoborough School, Chris Legg collection)
Location of the Middlebere Plateway (Peter Sills)