Exeter, Yeovil and Dorchester Railway.
Another month, another railroad. On the 28th August 1845 Martin “wrote to Mr Whitaker respg taking part of the Survey of the Exeter Yeovil & Dorchester Railway”. Oddly enough this company had not yet been formed; in fact it would take another three years before the bill establishing it was enacted by Parliament yet people were already planning its route and John Martin was one of those who took part in surveying it.
By 1847 Southampton and Dorchester railway or at least some precursor of it.
8the company had built its line from Wareham and points east, passing as it did through land belonging to the Earl of Ilchester and entering Dorchester by way of Fordington before terminating at what is today Dorchester South station. To make sense of the entries that follow it is necessary to jump forward eight years to a notice that appeared in the London Gazette of 13th November 1855. By now all the railways had been subsumed into the LSWR and a new railroad [in fact the old Exeter Yeovil and Dorchester Railway] was to be built by the LSWR. It was to commence: “in the parish of Fordington, in the county of Dorset by a junction with Southampton and Dorchester line of the London and South-Western Railway, at or near the first bridge over that railway, east of the Dorchester station thereof, and passing thence, from, in, through, or into the several parishes, townships, and extra-parochial or other places following, or some of them” then follows a list of fifty nine parishes through which the line might pass. The line would not run through all of these parishes, it was common to include many ‘just in case’ they were needed but when you consider the number of parishes that Martin had previously surveyed[blue] it is not surprising that he might be consulted by the railway company. Parishes in red were mentioned in the 1845 diary in connection with railway work:
“that is to say: Fordington, Stinsford, Holy Trinity, Dorchester, Martin’s Town, otherwise Winterbourne Saint Martin, Monkton, Winterbourne Steepleton, Winterbourne Abbas, Little Bredy, Kingston, Kingston Russell, East Compton, Long Bredy, Little Cheney, Puncknoll, Dowerfield, Baglake, Chilcombe, Swyre, Saint Luke’s, Sterthill, Shipton Gorge, Grasson, Cogdon, Burton Bradstock, Wych, Bothenhampton, Bridport Harbour, Bridport, Walditch, Bradpole,Symondsbury, Marshallsea, Marshwood, Ailington, Ash, Bowood, Melplash, Netherbury, Pillesdon, Stoke Abbotts, Bettiscombe, Lower Loders, Higher Loders, Loders, Whitchurch Canonicorum,‘ Holditch, Thorncombe, Beerhall, Broom, Axminster, Wyld Court, Phillihome, Chardstock, Wadbrook, and Hawkchurch, in the county of Dorset,’ and Thorncombe, Broom, and Axminster, in thecounty of Devon, and terminating in the said parish of Hawkchurch, in an arable field (parcel of Wadbrook Farm) belonging to John Churchill Langdon, Esquire, and in the occupation of Mr.George Reader, and numbered on the deposited plan of the railway authorized by ” The Exeter, Yeovil, and Dorchester Railway Act, 1848,”, in the said parish of Hawkchurch.”
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Reference to the Ordnance survey map shows just how difficult this route would have been to engineer. As far as Winterbourne Steepleton the route could have followed the valley of the South Winterbourne river but after that it is not entirely clear where the line would have gone for this is an area of steep hills and blind valleys- very unprepossessing for a railway engineer. If the line had made it to Bridport life would have become somewhat easier, for the line, now heading northwards could have run along the line of the River Brit and we can follow its route from Martins surveying activities. First it would have gone to Melplash [or as Martin called it Melpash] where it would have wound its way around a series of hills before heading to Netherbury and then to Beaminster. From there it would have been a short distance to join the line from Yeovil to Axminster main line at Misterton.
Given the difficulties of engineering the line posed near to Bridport it can hardly come as as surprise that the line was never built.