East Dorset’s railways
1800s to 1970s
At the outset, an historical overview of the district’s railway development is helpful for context and dating of events. This first stage is essentially a chronology from just before the dawn of the railway age through construction, opening and development to the peak operations, the declining years and the disappearance or redevelopment of the railway’s physical remains. It only covers those lines that were actually built and operated (with one exception). It cannot deal with the many proposed, but not built schemes that would have affected East Dorset. They are the subject of a separate part of the study. Nor is this section an attempt to explain why and how the local railways came into being and developed, together with all the actors and agencies involved. It simply provides a basic temporal framework for more detailed studies of these aspects and many others. This outline inevitably steps outside the study area to show important sub-regional, geographical and historical context.
Some readers approaching this website may already be aware – in outline or in some detail – of the development of the East Dorset railway network. We hope you will find fresh information or at least a fresh interpretation here to extend your knowledge. Other readers may be casually interested but have little knowledge; indeed, we suspect that many incomers to the district since the 1960s are not even aware that a railway network ever existed, so far has it been wiped from the landscape by modern development. Primarily for these latter audiences, we present the briefest of outlines here.
Extraordinarily, the local railway boom would see no less than three ‘S&D’ railways eventually emerge and connect – the Southampton & Dorchester, the Salisbury & Dorset Junction and the Somerset & Dorset (Joint). Perhaps the Stockton & Darlington set a precedent! Our study needs to distinguish carefully between the three.
First on the scene
Dorset had some early industrial and mineral railways: in Purbeck, the Middlebere Plateway (1807) and the Furzebrook Railway (started 1840); also the Portland Railway (a public railway incorporated 1825, opened 1826). However, the County was relatively late in planning and developing longer-distance ‘main lines’ and the Southampton & Dorchester Railway (opened 1847) is recognised as the first to be built across the County and indeed through East Dorset and Wimborne.
The Southampton & Dorchester was not the first lengthy railway proposal involving East Dorset. Pre-dating it by nearly two decades was a hybrid of the little-known and closely-related Western Railway and Radstock, Shaftesbury & Poole Railway (RS&P) schemes of 1825-26, intended for steam-hauled passenger and goods services. In turn, these were on the cusp between the canal and railway ages, and had evolved from the long-cherished idea of a waterway connection between the Bristol and English Channels, including a ship canal, thereby saving the risky sea journey around Land’s End. The early railway elements came specifically from the partly-failing Dorset & Somerset Canal scheme (authorised 1796), intended to connect the Bath and Poole areas, mainly to transport coal.
The whole intriguing, hybrid scheme is mentioned now:
(1) for the early date (notably contemporaneous with the Stockton & Darlington Railway opening!),
(2) because the intended main alignment of the RS&P anticipated schemes that later formed the Somerset & Dorset Railway, (although the S&DR didn’t connect the Radstock coalfield to its system until 1874), and
(3) because it collapsed financially, just as the railway age was taking hold, leaving the stage for the London & Southampton Railway (later L&SWR) and the Great Western Railway to battle for development rights across this territory in the next decade.
The RS&P was embedded among competing alignment proposals over much of Wessex – of strategic links, branches, alternative and revised routes of canals, railways and even hybrids. Most were floated by connected companies between the late 1700s and the 1820s. Had the RS&P succeeded from the late 1820s, the subsequent railway (and navigable waterway) geography across Somerset and Dorset might have been notably different from that actually built, or at least differently ordered chronologically. The RS&P line would have been in operation some 15-20 years ahead of the Southampton & Dorchester. We plan to be looking separately at this complex project in more detail, alongside numerous later proposals for railways through East Dorset that involved Wimborne, but failed at various stages prior to implementation.
Wimborne reached
The district’s, and indeed Dorset’s, first implemented standard-gauge railway was the Southampton & Dorchester Railway. (It might have been broad-gauge, had its company sold out to the Great Western Railway and not been amalgamated with the L&SWR!). Promoted in the mid-1840s, largely by Wimborne solicitor, Charles Castleman, with local landowners as Directors, it planned a main line from a junction at Northam, north of the 1840-opened Southampton (Terminus) Station, passing through or near to Lyndhurst, Ringwood, Wimborne, Poole (Hamworthy) and Wareham. The Crown Commissioners forced it to avoid a reasonably direct route across the heart of the New Forest via Lyndhurst and take a much more southerly alignment via Brockenhurst. That, together with the imperative of serving the existing market towns and avoiding major water bodies such as Poole Harbour, led to a somewhat circuitous course and earned it the critical epithet of ‘Castleman’s Corkscrew’. The validity or otherwise of this tag will be explored elsewhere in this website.
Lymington and Christchurch were missed altogether, the former soon petitioning for a branch and the latter being served initially by Christchurch Road Station (renamed Holmsley in 1862), seven miles from Christchurch itself. Bournemouth barely existed as a settlement then, so didn’t merit a direct connection, while Poole was served by a drop line into a terminus at Hamworthy (Poole’s first station).
The Southampton & Dorchester Railway obtained its Parliamentary Act in July 1845 and construction ensued quickly, but not without major physical obstacles in its path. Opening almost throughout (from Blechynden, west of Southampton Tunnel) occurred on 1st June 1847. (A collapsed part of the tunnel was not repaired for some weeks and prevented immediate connection to the London & Southampton line at Northam.) The line was absorbed in 1848 by the London & South Western Railway (its backer and operator from the outset).
A branch from Wimborne to Blandford seemed a possibility for inclusion in the 1845 Bill, having appeared in various unsuccessful ‘Mania’ schemes to link Bristol and Poole, but this did not proceed. The L&SWR finally proposed a branch in 1847, but the bill failed for lack of Parliamentary time, probably caused by landowners’ opposition. During the 1850s, a Blandford connection reappeared as part of many proposed greater schemes again linking Bristol or the Bristol Channel with Poole. Most involved Wimborne as a node on strategic, long-distance routes (as it had been in the stage coach era) or as a start and end point. Had any of these come to fruition, sleepy Wimborne might have become a ‘backwater frontier’ for railways – between the south-east and south-west of England, and between the south coast and the Midlands and North. Wimborne also had the potential to be a railway centre of more significance than the district’s small population merited, and this frontier or boundary character is being explored in depth in the study.
Expansion and development
The Blandford ‘branch’ was indeed next on the scene – as the Dorset Central Railway, opening from Wimborne to a temporary station at Blandford St. Mary on 1st November 1860. The DCR’s title clearly implied greater ambitions – specifically to reach Bruton and connect with the older Somerset Central Railway to create a Channel-to-Channel route from Poole and Wimborne to Burnham, with an ambitious vision to provide a direct route from South Wales to France via shipping links at either end of the railway. That railway link was completed in stages in 1862-63 and consolidated into the Somerset & Dorset Railway in 1862. The Company subsequently became the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway from 1876, two years after its network reached Bath and connected with the Midland Railway, and two years after the L&SWR reached Bournemouth West, enabling through running between the two towns.
Third on the scene was the Ringwood & Christchurch Railway, on the eastern fringe of our study area but of crucial significance in the East Dorset story. Opened on 13th November 1862, it gave Christchurch its first proper station, just east of the current station. As Bournemouth proceeded with its remarkable growth from barren heathland, the operational line extended on 14th March 1870 from Christchurch to Bournemouth (East), later the site of Bournemouth’s goods depot, east of the later ‘Central’ station. In 1888, the original Christchurch station became solely the goods yard when a new passenger station opened a short distance westwards on the new Bournemouth Direct line.
Fourth was the Salisbury & Dorset Junction Railway, opened on 20th December 1866 from Alderbury Junction (on the Eastleigh/Bishopstoke to Salisbury line) to West Moors Junction on the Southampton & Dorchester line. This route was the eventual outcome of several schemes during the Railway Mania to enter Dorset from the Salisbury direction and further afield, even Manchester. As noted, West Moors didn’t exist as a significant village then and the L&SWR provided no junction station initially, Wimborne serving as the start and end point of most early train services. West Moors acquired its station in 1867 after local pressure, notably by the proprietors of Stewart’s nurseries in Ferndown, who wished to send their products far afield.
Fifth was a drop line – the Poole & Bournemouth Railway – opened on 2nd December 1872 into central Poole from New Poole Junction (later Broadstone), another place that had no village and no station before this date. Broadstone is on the southern boundary of our study area. We include it here because from 1885 it formed the junction for the ‘cut-off’ line from Bailey Gate and Corfe Mullen, thereby bypassing Wimborne for trains from the Bath and Bristol direction and starting the long process of Wimborne’s decline as a railway centre. The new Poole link then extended to Bournemouth West, opening on 15th June 1874.
The ‘Wimborne cut-off’, officially called the Poole & Bournemouth Junction Branch or the ‘Western Loop’, but known by several other unofficial names, was authorised by the South Western Railway (Bournemouth, etc.) Act of 1883. Single track, it opened to some goods services on 14th November 1885 and to most longer-distance passenger services on 1st December 1886, the delay supposedly being due mainly to completing much-needed improvements at the somewhat basic Bournemouth West station. The width of the cut-off formation allowed for double-track that was never laid, despite proposals to do so in 1893, 1895 and as late as 1925, but the link largely eliminated the awkward reversal of Somerset & Dorset trains at Wimborne.
Network completed
While subsequent railway construction happened just outside our immediate study area, in connection with Bournemouth’s development, it would have a huge and ultimately negative impact on the railways serving Wimborne. Bournemouth’s East and West station were linked during 1885-86, but the new works not inspected until 1887, and not fully used for passenger services until the Bournemouth Direct line opened from Lymington Junction (Brockenhurst) to Christchurch Junction on 6th March 1888. Through trains to and from Weymouth are believed to have continued to operate via Wimborne to avoid reversal at Broadstone until the direct route to Weymouth from Poole and Bournemouth was completed by the link across Holes Bay to Hamworthy Junction, opened on 19th May 1893. Some Weymouth and Swanage-bound through trains continued via Wimborne daily until the late 1920s and a few even as late as the 1960s. However, most main line services from Waterloo were routed through Bournemouth, and Wimborne was relegated to a stop on the so-called ‘Old Road’ between Lymington Junction and Hamworthy Junction.
In the face of increasing road and bus competition, halts opened in the 1920s at: Ashley Heath Halt (1st April 1927) and Corfe Mullen Halt (9th July 1928), as well as Creekmoor Halt (19th June 1933; just outside our study area).
Other significant railway developments in the 20th century included World War 1 military branch or siding installations at Poole Quay (West Bay), Longfleet, Lake (Hamworthy, Admiralty Flying Boat Base and Lake Halt), Holton Heath (Cordite Factory), Keysworth (east of Wareham), Corfe Mullen (Admiralty Waterworks), Hurn Airfield, Blandford Camp, Worgret Camp (Wareham). World War 2 installations occurred at the army fuel depot at West Moors, the Ministry of Supply ‘buffer’ food depot at Uddens (east of Wimborne), both opened in 1943, and at Creekmoor (Ministry of Supply), opened 1940. Space and dates prohibit any of these (except Blandford Camp) being shown on the 1921 map at the start of this section, but interested readers are referred to Track Layout Diagrams of the Southern Railway and B.R. S.R. See references at end.
Peak and decline
The rest of our study area’s railway history is mostly one of gradual decline, although the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods saw a boom in both passenger and freight traffic, with Wimborne becoming a major exchange and re-marshalling point for goods. World War 1 was a peak operating period, but ultimately a watershed between the boom times and the onset of decline. The early 1920s, just prior to the Grouping of independent railways into the ‘Big Four’ companies, saw the first substantial economies.
The little-used Wimborne Junction to Corfe Mullen loop was earmarked for closure, officially losing its remaining passenger services on 11th July 1920 (although timetables suggest a residual service continued until 1st October 1922). Through goods services survived until 17th June 1933, after which Wimborne Station and Junction underwent considerable rationalisation as the depression took hold. The loop was lifted except for a stub from Corfe Mullen Junction to Carter’s Clay Siding, used until 1959. The Ringwood-Christchurch service closed in September1935, by which time it was a bucolic byway.
Final decades
A revival in World War Two was followed by looming threats in the 1950s, especially as the 1955 BR Modernisation Plan took hold and road traffic grabbed yet more business from the railways. It briefly seemed that the Old Road would retain at least secondary importance and some major strengthening work occurred over the Bickerley Viaduct at Ringwood as late as 1961. However, the Beeching Report proposals in March 1963 marked out the Old Road, Salisbury, and Somerset & Dorset routes for total closure, the first two losing passenger services on and from 4th May 1964, those on the latter limping on until 7th March 1966. Oddly, Broadstone Junction to Hamworthy Junction was missed out from the closure procedures in 1963-64 and 1965-66 and never officially closed (see Colin Divall’s paper: An Illegal Beeching Closure – linked from the History page list of ‘Emerging papers’), although regular traffic ceased from the 1964 date. Any through movements over this section had ended by 9th June 1966, but clay traffic from Doulton’s Siding near Hillbourne remained until about May 1972, being removed via Broadstone.
Residual goods services westwards from Ringwood remained until 8thAugust 1967, from Blandford to Poole until 6th January 1969, from West Moors army fuel depot until Summer 1974, and last of all from Poole to Wimborne until 2nd May 1977. The situation with the Broadstone to Hamworthy Junction line is less clear, but we understand that any remaining through movements of traffic between these two places had ceased by 9th June 1966, leaving just Doulton’s Clay Siding (Hillbourne) to be served from Broadstone until May 1972. Singling of Ringwood to Broadstone had already occurred during 1967.
Destruction and survival
The earliest total closure and track-lifting had occurred on the Wimborne Junction to Carter’s Siding section of the Wimborne loop, from 1933, part sold to Dorset County and Poole Borough Councils in the very early days of planning for Wimborne Bypass. BR’s contractors lifted the West Moors to Alderbury Junction line in 1965, followed by Carter’s Siding to Corfe Mullen Junction in Summer 1968, then Blandford to Broadstone Junction in 1970, and West Moors to Wimborne in 1974. Lifting of remaining track from Broadstone to Wimborne had finished by early 1978.
Disposal of railway land from the 1960s to the 1980s proceeded with some haste, no doubt fuelled by the high demand for development land as the Poole-Bournemouth conurbation threatened to swallow all before it. This is an intriguing sub-story in its own right, with some prime sites such as stations soon lost for housing and industry, thereby blocking route continuity. Efforts from the mid-1960s onwards to protect the formations from development, in case any kind of urban railway or rapid transit network was needed for the burgeoning conurbation and its travel-to-work area, were eventually swept aside in a roads-orientated strategic development policy.
Aftermath
Little of the district’s railway infrastructure is still recognisable as such; other than: sections of trackbed converted into shared-use trails mainly for walkers, cyclists and horse-riders; one platform of Ashley Heath Halt; the ‘tunnel’ at Merley; a few minor over/under-bridges (including an early iron bridge carrying Northleigh Lane in Colehill); the ostentatious, listed Bridge 77 over the western drive into Canford Park; a few, generally heavily-modified crossing keepers’ lodges in residential use; and some substantial earthworks here and there. An explorer’s outlook and a discerning eye can still unearth more obscure remains such as the base of Wimborne Junction Signal Box, hidden in undergrowth.
over the Millstream on the Avon meadows between Ashley and Ringwood lies immediately east of our study area, its rebuilding in 1961-62 is significant because it hinted at a longer-term future for the ‘Old Road’ through Wimborne late in the day, but it proved a futile gesture. The rebuilding involved replacing the earlier timber decking with concrete panels, each spanning a length between the original brick piers. Laterally, they partly overlapped the separate alignment of the former Christchurch line, indicated by the protruding parts of the piers. The divergence of the two routes was just west of the Avon, inside our study area. An unidentified M7 class 0-4-4 tank and pull-push set from Brockenhurst to Bournemouth Central head west in the frozen conditions of early 1963. Photo: J. Read; © and courtesy Ringwood Meeting House Archives
Main References
In some cases, pinning down exact dates for openings and closures (and for any developments in between, including name changes for stations and halts) can be a minefield for research. Primary sources such as railway company records are normally the most reliable, and some researchers and authors have collated material from these. Otherwise, we are reliant on the recordings in secondary sources such as those listed below, which are generally accurate.
Clinker, Charles R. (1978) Clinker’s Register of Closed Passenger Station and Goods Depots in England, Scotland and Wales, 1830-1977. Avon Anglia, Bristol
Jackson, B. J. (2007, 2008) Castleman’s Corkscrew, including the Railways of Bournemouth and Associated Lines. Volume 1: The Nineteenth Century; Volume 2: The Twentieth Century and Beyond. Oakwood Press, Usk.
Lucking, J. H. (1968) Railways of Dorset: An Outline of their Establishment, Development and Progress from 1825. Railway Correspondence & Travel Society, Lichfield
Popplewell, L. (1973) Bournemouth Railway History: An Exposure of Victorian Engineering Fraud, Dorset Publishing Company, Milborne Port
G. A. Pryer and A. V. Paul (1980) Track Layout Diagrams of the Southern Railway and B.R. S.R., Section 1 – Bournemouth and East Dorset. Also: R. A. Cooke (1980) Track Layout Diagrams of the G.W.R. and B.R. W.R., Section 18 – Somerset & Dorset Railway. Both were published by R. A. Cooke, Harwell, Oxon.
Williams, R. A. (1968, 1973) The London & South Western Railway, Volume 1: The Formative Years; Volume 2: Growth and Consolidation. David & Charles, Newton Abbot
