Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum

Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum
Purbeck Mining Museum under construction
Terminus	Norden
Commercial operations
Built by	Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum Group
Original gauge	3ft 9in (1143mm)
Preserved operations
Stations	0
Preserved gauge	2ft (610mm)
Commercial history
Opened	1854
Closed	1999
Preservation history
2004	Planning permission is granted to develop a museum at Norden Station
2013	Steam returns to the Line, officially
Headquarters	Swanage
Website
www.purbeckminingmuseum.org

The Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum is a museum about the history of ball clay mining in the Isle of Purbeck. The museum is located adjacent to Norden station on the Swanage Railway and is open from the end of March to the end of September on Saturdays, Sundays, Tuesday, Wednesdays and Bank Holidays from 11am to 4.30pm.

At the site the group has relocated a redundant mine to Norden and built a railway around the site with a new engine shed and the restoration of wagons that worked on the lines around Norden.

The main future aim of the museum is to construct a new building at Norden to house Secundus, wagons and other artefacts not on display at present. It will also contain a library and education centre.

It is planned to extend the narrow gauge railway over the other side of the Swanage Branch line to land owned by the group via Bridge 15. In 2010 a structural engineer surveyed Bridge 15, a skew bridge over the Swanage Railway. The condition of the bridge was good for a "temporary" bridge built in 1885.

The railway was built to remove a "bottleneck" to Staffordshire potteries by building a line from Norden to Middlebere Tramway which was opened in 1806 to a 3 ft 9 in (1,143 mm) gauge for 3.4 miles long. The rails were cast iron, L-shaped 3 ft long and weighing 40 lb, the horse-drawn clay wagons had flangeless wheels, and the sleepers were simply stone blocks (60-70 lb) numbering well in excess of 10,000. (some of the sleepers remain in place today, complete with holes where the rails used to be fixed. Others have been used as paving stones at Langton Wallis Cottage.) The cast iron rails secured to stone blocks (with metal spike and oak dowel) set in the ground. In 1807 the line was extended south under the Wareham to Corfe road. The tunnel exists and is grade listed however it is blocked, a second tunnel was built in 1825 east of the first tunnel but is now blocked and is not grade listed. In 1881 when the LSWR built the Swanage line the line was extended east parallel to the line and Eldons Sidings were built to transfer clay to the standard gauge network. In 1907 Middlebere plateway was abandoned but had been in continual use for 101 years, The quay at Middlebere creek has fallen into disrepair and almost vanished. Some of the stone sleepers remain in place today, complete with holes where the rails used to be fixed, whilst others have been reused as paving stones at various locations. Others can be found in the walls at Middlebere farm. In many places the route across Hartland moor can be traced.