Paul. This was put in when the Archaeological dig happened to move the 1000’s of tiles and spoil from one end of the site to the other. They were wagons pushed around by hand. Had lunch today with someone who remembers it.
The site was a Palace used by Henry viii as a hunting lodge, a few fields away the foundations of a spectator stand was identified using geophys. While doing my archaeology degree at Winchester in 2002 we went and did some conservation work on the site. The tall wall was one end of the great hall. Yes the hollow you want down into was the wine cellars
2 foot gauge (or 600mm) tracks were often used during archeological digs. I've seen them in Greece and photos of their use in Egypt. They were usual pushed, man power.
It always surprises me that we have so many historical remains - and sometimes whole buildings - in the UK that haven't got a big fence, a ticket shop and a gift shop!
Where I used to live a neolithic site possibly managed by English Heritage had a local gypsy family setup a gate, charge admission and sell postcards. The site was the Rollright Stones.
Thank you as always for today’s walking tour. Always a look back in time. Hello to Rebecca as always, and enjoy the week ahead. Really appreciate it. See you on the next, Paul. ❤❤😊😊
The use of Decauville-style hand-moveable rail sections of about 600mm or 2ft gauge has been standard for around 140years in the sugar cane industry. They came into their own in the land of their inventor during the First World War but can be seen in photos of Archaeological Diggings all over the world where there was a need to shift large amounts of overlaying spoil off site. Even where coolies were a dime a dozen they were often much more efficient. Also less likely to go on strike at inopportune times or to nick stuff.
Light portable railways were used a lot before WW2 and afterwards in building roads (!), moving spoil on building sites etc and they weren't necessarily long. Sounds a perfect solution for moving waste from your excavations, especially when manpower and trainee archaeologists were thin on the ground.
Ive seen the small diesels locomotives used in WW1 (on Tom Scott's or someone else ? Was green and armoured from WW1 ) they were used up to the 1950s on new housing estates moving stuff around and as stated the tracks were easily moved.
Agreed. The building of new towns such as Welwyn Garden City involved laying light railways for moving stuff around site. Welwyn was a sufficiently large development that it was worth having engines too. The main line was used to bring in materials. Lorries in those days couldn't haul anything like as large a load as they do today, so rail really was the best means of moving bulk heavy materials. Without decent lorries / vans, one can easily see that the next best thing is a DIY railway kit with trucks. If the land was level, a few blokes could easily move a large quantity of material for very little effort (other than the digging). Interesting to see the remains of one at an important archeological site. The history of archeology is quite interesting; the things they used to think and do with every confidence of being correct would look crazy by today's standards. Tancred Borenius, the chap who dug it up, doesn't strike me as being amongst the 1930's preeminent archeologists. If they used a light railway for moving diggings around in large quantities there's a fair chance that an awful lot has been lost / displaced in the process. I suspect that a fair amount of the subsequent excavations has involved them thinking, "now where would Borenius have dumped the soil, if he'd dug it out of here?".
@@pwhitewickyeah! GEORGIUS STEVENICUS. Seriously, this looks rather like the two feet gauge quarry railways beloved of labourers to push small tipping hoppers to transport soil and stone over modest distances on a site.
Plenty of good comments on here. Just looking at the pictures of the rails and the imprint of the layout shouts 'contractor's light railway' to me, loud and clear. Until the plentiful availability of dumper trucks (the originals were converted Fordson tractors) any major construction work used light railways of about 60 cm / 2 foot gauge for muck shifting. I remember seeing a Ruston Hornsby diesel , similar to the Talyllyn's 'Midlander' , at work on the M6 at the top end of Stafford! The same applied to archarological excavations - from memory I've seen similar equipment at Sutton Hoo. Always ask 'what might it serve?' In this case - no quarry or other natural needs in the vicinity, so clearing the site prior to preservation. Keep 'em coming, Paul
Whenever I see an information board such as those in your video I take a photo of it on my tablet this giving me immediate access whilst continuing my walk and investigations. Also helpful when it's a map of the area.
Descendants? Yes, an interesting and amusing idea. Thanks for sharing. (By the way, JK Rowling made the same ancestors/descendants mistake in one of the Harry Potter books, so don't feel bad; you're in good company.)
Cool video. Love a mystery. Jogged my memory of the old Victorian sightseeing line that led from Hove to Devils Dyke views. The line is still visible at the dyke end but on a farm so needs permission to visit. There were also vernacular railways once up there, to travel up and down the hills.
The MOD deployed miles of 600mm gauge track in France to supply the Western Front (As did the Germans). It seems at least likely that track and rolling stock remaining in Britain would have been abundant (as surplus) after the war ended. So for a dig in the 30s, a likely source. I also had the pleasure of working on canal restorations in the 70s in which "Jubilee" tracks were used to take away material from the digs. Whether this was surplus or from old quarries, I don't know.
Yes, (I believe) 600 mm guage was pretty much the standard guage for trench railways. There's a narrow guage railway museum just north of Stoke On Trent, in Apedale (the Moseley Railway Trust) which has a lot of WW1 trench railway stuff (loco's etc.). They will surely have the info about the track guage(s) used.
When I visited Tretower Court in Brecknockshire back in the late 60s, there were narrow-gauge rail tracks on site. The simplest explanation was that the British Heritage equivalent of that time ( I forget the name, but it certainly wasn"t Cadw) used the tracks to remove rubble and fallen stonework to a temporary outdoor storage area, before sorting through it to help the stone masons rebuild. It was probably just for hand-pushed bogies. Suspect something similar here. And no explanation in the Wedgewood Blue guidebook either.
Nice little, well presented, mystery. It seems the archaeology spoil railway is the favourite guess, and I've not got any better idea, so it gets my vote.
Hi Paul, interesting little mystery. The article by Rosalind Johnson seems very well researched and must be why it was installed. It does seem strange that it hasn't been removed though or mentioned on the information panels, it certainly forms part of the sites history now. Have a great week!!
As always a very informative and interesting tour this day. Thank you for the time involved with these. Hello as always to Rebecca, and enjoy the week ahead. Always a tour I look forward to. Cheers Rebecca and Paul! ❤❤😊😊
As a starter for ten, there was a top secret “Z Battery” anti aircraft rocket facility based on the Clarendon estate during WW2. Perhaps a leftover from that? Just a thought. Storing Rocket reloads at a safe distance?
I have never heard of a Z battery before until you mentioned it. After a look on Google it seems the rockets only went up to 500 feet pulling a wire to catch low flying aeroplanes. Did the military have some sort of secret assets in the area very close by that needed defending from the Hun? Please tell us more. Salisbury plain is not an area I am familiar with but I know it has a long history of military use. Your answer may be very interesting. Thanks.
@@philhawley1219 Maybe you already know so please forgive me if I’m recapping prior knowledge.Salisbury Plain and the surrounding chalk plateau has been a military research and development area for Centuries. Boscome Down and Porton Down are perhaps the most secretive installations but there are many other locations used for training and formal exercises. My first thought was that the rail is so heavily eroded that it could easily be WW1 vintage. The soft ground at the excavation site would have made the ‘manpower’ railway a very efficient (and flexible) way for Archaeologists to move spoil around that site.
I thought this might be answered by looking at the aerial photo libraries that were amassed before during and after the war by the RAF but the Historic England archive does not cover the palace except with modern photos
OK, so this is how the conversation goes "mate, what shall we do with this piece of old rail track. I wos gonna take down the scrapper.... Na mate, let's take it up the old Palace and bury it, that'll screw with their minds".😊
Thank you for the fascinating video. I reckon the Victorians used these "railways", small gauge tracks with little trolleys on them, pulled by animals or humans, far more frequently than we realise. I live on a farm in Sussex, and there are a few yards of very small gauge track poking out of one of our ditches. About 100 yards away from this, on our land, there is an area which was clearly quarried for brick clay. "Kiln Lane" is just down the road and my guess is they used a simple trolley system to convey the clay up to the road and then on to the local brick kiln.
Here in Shropshire we have similar tracks around the small lead and barytes mines. The biggest mines used steam locomotives and in one instance a four mile long cableway.
The use of railway lines as we know them actually descended from -mostly- coal pits, open cast pits and granite quarries- all of which used horses to pull the loads- some of the more enterprising, mountain side ones used the weight of the loaded truck going DOWN to pull the empty truck UP- thus would need two parallel lines. Never equate "railway lines" with "locomotive" There were, of course, static locomotives that, using cables, did the work of horses before they finally got around to putting the thing on wheels. Love these little gems here, though, the only ones I will take seriously!
What caught my eye is on the google image around the 11 second mark is what looks like a roundhouse and turntable foundations marked by the trees on the left side of the shot.
Small wheeled or tracked contractors plant is quite a recent thing. Up to around the 1950s there was really nothing between the navvy's wheelbarrow and huge steel tracked cable excavators, apart from temporary narrow gauge railway setups like this. The ubiquitous site dumper started to appear around the 50s. The roadbuilding section of the Amberly Chalk Pits Museum is a good place to see the evolution of the equipment.
I wonder if Rail Map Online would be interested in adding the railway to their map. What I don't know is how they would classify it. Whether it is "Industrial", "Narrow Gauge" or even "Historical Tramway".
Ruins are often jokingly called 'Above ground quarries' as it doesn't take long for a building to be stripped of it's finery (fireplaces, window mullions etc) and then of it's walls to build newer structures.
This was relatively common Decauville type portable railways were/are a very efficient method of moving excavated material. They can be easily laid and easily removed. Such railways being virtually infinitely reusable Also they do very little damage to the site. I would guess that the skips would have been man powered given the length of the line. My favourite example of such a railway being the line that Howard Carter installed to assist with the excavation of Tutankhamen's tomb! They are sold excellent photos of the Pharaohs grave goods being transported on the 600mm gauge railway!
Going by the history of Clarendon Palace, the very first royal to stay at the Palace was my 28th great-grandfather Henry I and his wife Adelicia of Louvain. Awesome history 😊
Two foot gauge railways were very common in quarries and mines, man pushed or hauled with ponies. The main thing is the trucks were standardised and could be purchased new from a catalogue or second hand. A lot of this stuff was manufactured and used in the trenches of the first world war. All this equipment was sold off after, so it was available and cheap. It is worth noting that iron and steel couldn't effectively be recycled until the late 60s. The scrap man collected stuff to be sold on and repurposed.
very light rail was considered to be an efficient way to move things on any industrial site. it is the easiest way to move materials. there was very light rail behind the bakery and shops across the road from where i grew up. as kids we dug it up and found not just rails but a set of points for a second track and what may have been a turntable. this was all to move supplies to the back of the bakery. i still have the scar on my finger where i cut myself on buried glass. my friend's mother was horrified. i remember her holding me over a concrete trough to wash all the dirt off. i had never seen blood before this. yes, i was really young when this happened.
Here in the Pacific Northwest -- the US part, although I bet this was also the case on the other side of the border in Canada -- when harvesting timber logging companies constructed temporary rail lines to move the logs. Yes, they would lay down a mile or two of track, haul timber along it to where they could be either milled or moved to another method of conveyance (sometimes assembled into a raft to be moved down a river, sometimes a permanent railroad) for processing. Then when that stretch of forest had been clear-cut, the track would be pulled & moved to another stretch of woods. Once they were finished with clear-cutting the area, they would leave a lot of the equipment behind because they were not worth the cost of recovery. I remember as a boy scout camping in the Coast Range of Oregon & finding these abandoned machines rotting/rusting on the grass-covered slopes. Industrial archaeology is a subject non-specialists are largely unaware even exists. P.S. Anyone else notice the second piece of rail poking out of the ground to the right of the longer piece? Paul must have been in a hurry -- or had too many things he wanted to include in this piece -- to mention it.
@@llywrch7116 , ah yes, temporary timber tracks. i lived next door to where a horse-drawn timber track (timber rails too, not steel) was built from the nearby hills to transport timber to where it was transferred to barges back in the 19th century. if you run a timber company, timber rails are a lot cheaper than steel.
Depending on how early the railway is, possibly for people to take the stone away for other buildings. In Kent, Tonbridge Castle was mostly knocked down in the late 1700's? early 1800's? for the stone, the gatehouse is still there, but much of the rest was reused to build locks on a canal on the river medway, near to Tonbridge.
Oh my, did you see that face? Paul was clearly disappointed that the Friends of Clarendon Palace didn't mention the railway on their website. it's a curiousity though. I like Alpakas.
Tancred's tracks. He liked railways. The writer John Harris asserts that Borenius was sent by the British MI6 to Geneva in January 1941.The perilous journey was via Bristol (Whitchurch) to Lisbon (Sintra) by KLM DC-3, then to Geneva by train across Spain & Vichy France. Wiki.
That's 30lb rail. Commonly used in quarrying & mining applications so would have been easy to obtain. Moving spoil with hand pushed carts is plausible if the gradient is small otherwise a windlass would be needed.
Hi Paul, my guess would be a military rifle range. 60cm/2ft gauge short lines were often used for moving targets to and from the butts. I couldn't see too clearly if there were the usual earthworks for a rifle range, although the site may have been cleared. It's not too far from Salisbury so there possibly was a military presence in the area in WW1 or WW2. I have used several firing ranges (e.g. Bisley in Surrey) with this sort of installation, so fairly common. Targets would be stacked on a trolley and pushed by hand into storage sheds, or hauled by a tiny Lister petrol loco.
I’ve ran into a similar problem, apart from it’s with a narrow gauge railway around redcar and cleveland, i literally cannot find any info on it at all, but it apparently exists.
My guess, prior to reading the accompanying article, was that it had been used to remove stone for reuse elsewhere. Sometime in the 19th century. The actual usage makes more sense. I'm pleased that my guess was wrong.
Thinking about it through the video, would of thought they were just dumped there but towards the end... I know it not that and cannot think what it is, great video
Why would anyone carry old railway lines to dump in the middle of a field? The option for most people would be to take them to a scrap dealer and be paid. There is a comment above from DottyDora which I think explains everything.
600 mm = 60 cm = 23.622 inches, rounded up to 2 feet. This was "Decauville" gauge in France, a whole system of sectional track, cars, and small steam or gas locos. The failed French Panama Canal effort used Decauville system, as during planning in France, they had no idea of the scope of the job. Most of the trench railways in WW-I were 60 cm, the Germans called them Feldbahn. After the war, a huge amount of track and equipment was available, and used in many places for construction or hauling agricultural produce. There are photos of Sherman tanks on French roads, with 60 cm track running along next to the road. I saw some of this on the hillside vineyards along the Mosel River in Germany in 1970.
To this I'd like to add: Decauville system was invented in 1875, I think, as an emergency method to bring in the harvest from a particularly muddy field. The track was portable, that was really the idea. Actually I saw a facsimile of a late 19th century catalogue from Orenstein & Koppel (Berlin) which looked pretty much like a model railway catalogue with rail sections, switches and, of course, engines and carriages. Only this was the real thing. What I'd like to stress: these railways was used not only in quarries, industries and such, but also in the agriculture. Although I find it plausible the railway was WW1 surplus, I think you shouldn't rule out it might be older than that. Is there by any chance a manufacturing year stamped into the rail (or manufacturer or original buyer)? In Sweden this was commonplace, although it can be misleading as I once found a rail manufactured in 1923 in a track which I knew was laid out in 1980...)
In "days of yore," before the advent of dumper trucks, tipper trucks, and the like, you put down a temporary line of rails if you wanted to move stuff. Some were mechanised using locomotives, but many were not, employing horse power, man power, or rope haulage using a fixed donkey engine. They were actually quite numerous, though many, being temporary, were never recorded. Excellent bit of research though.
If I remember correctly, the railway was installed during the early excavation work to carry away the spoil. I believe the work was carried out partly as a job creation scheme in the 1920s, possibly for veterans, and a huge amount of spoil was generated so with military precision, a light railway was used.
They used portable narrow gauge railways in WWI to supply the trenches and also around the Welsh slate quarries. Possibly sourced as either ex army stock (which given its location near Salisbury plain and several army camps is possible), might have been going cheap and local enough that the site Forman would have seen it as a sound investment to aid efficiency of the excavation? Interesting stuff though Paul.
I knew straight away what it was when you showed it running to a pile of earth and rubble. It's actually not that uncommon for large historical sites, only unusual thing here is that they actually left the track behind. Other historical sites excavated in the 1900s also had little tracks put down and used mine drams to move large amounts of stone and earth. Neath Abbey's excavations had such a system I believe.
"There wouldn't be a quarry here" you say. But, erm, an old stone building falling apart does constitute a good quarry. Here in Denmark, once you open your eyes, we have quite a bit of stoneworked agricultural buldings close to fortress ruins and apparently built with material - quader stones - from them. I submit that looking for nearby buildings that are unusually "stony" will perhaps be an interesting quest. All of that may of course predate the rail line .... or perhaps the estate used the ruins as a source for road fill.
hi again Paul , yet another interesting video, could the tracks be just for local use, like you said moving stuff like soil and other goods, , it is very strange , well done and thank you 😊
I agree but if you set a gauge of 2ft between the rail centres then you get about 600mm between the inner edges. Today we almost always measure gauge between the inner edges but I believe that was not always the practice in the past, e.g. with some Welsh mine and quarry railways. That said, whilst British made Hudson track was made to 2ft gauge, I expect French made Decauville track would have been 600mm gauge. Before internal combustion powered tractors became ubiquitous, it was quite common to use light narrow gauge railways on farms and in industry.
you would think that there would be some sort of passing point at either end of the line , unless they were lifting the empty carts on and off so the full ones could be moved away and emptied ?. but that depends on how big the dig was as it was hard to see the size of the spoil heap as the heap will be next to the line where they tip the spoil out thats assuming they were side tipped as it says each would carry 12 barrow loads which isnt a small load even back then. which then begs the question of why would the estate have a portable railway line in the first place ? , landscaping ? A small quarry operation , demolition of an out building / s ?.
It was quite common to simply lay a hundred yards or so of track and push a skip wagon or perhaps two up and down it. points would bbe an added complication. With 2ft/600mm gauge track that would be easy for just one person to do. Paul Decauville, who developed the portable railway (with rail welded to steel sleepers in panels that one or two men could carry) for his won farm in 1875, began with 400 mm track with wagons entirely hand or animal propelled though he later focussed on 500mm and particularly 600mm gauge track and introduced locos . II m not sure when it acquired the generic name of "Jubilee" track in Britain but the major manufacturer was R. Hudson of Leeds who I believe licensed the designs from Decauville.
I'm always knocked out by how old things can be in England , U.K. My location , Texas , declared it's independence from Mexico on March 2nd , 1836 and you have things a millennium before that .
I thought it may have been used to take stone away when the buildings were not being used, but someone has already suggested that the track was used by the excavators...
Had I not seen the answers about archaologists, two thoughts came up: (1) It was a light railway used by the military, who have an enormous imprint on the Salisbury area; (2) Someone using the site in the past as a quarry for building materials in the local area - it isn't unusual for ancient sites to be pilfered for dressed stone, slates/tiles/flagstones, etc. Is that despicable or would it be classed as 'Slightly iffy recycling?' 🤔🤔🤔
My first thought was that someone built it to haul stones away from the ruins and repurpose them. But that had probably already been done by the time they invented railways.
Hi, interested to know if you’ve looked into the disused railway from Fullerton Wherewell Forton Longparish etc? I remember hearing that these branch lines were only built if businesses funded them for factories mines etc. It appears to be quite an engineering project to take this route but why?
It was the practice of locals in many parts of Europe living near an abandoned stone building to reuse the stones from the structure for more immediate needs, such as mending walls or building churches & cottages. Historians & archeologists are often pleasantly surprised at what is uncovered when an old building is remodeled.
Think you might mean 600mm gauge, Paul. 60mm is pretty close to a Gauge II garden railway! Bigger than most, but a bit too small to ride on or do useful work.
@@pwhitewick Somehow I could see a King Henry or two enjoying a garden railway, and it makes sense he'd want something bigger and grander than your run-of-the-mill G scale... Make it one bigger and call it H scale!
My thoughts was that it may have been a railway of convenience to move bits around the estate especially if was beginning to sprawl. However, @DottyDora seems to have the answer below that makes good sense.
I think there are more horse drawn tramways around the world than we think and the romans, greeks and the Egyptians did use them to shift stone plus mine the gold copper lead across the world. Wooden track would of been torn up to re-use same for iron and so very hard to prove anything of the true age of the tram / railway pre steam era.
Not so unusual, normal construction / earth move methode for that given era. Look up Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, it had it's own 600mm railway line when it was "rebuild" between 1901 bis 1908 -> wikipedia set to German "Feldbahn der Hohkönigsburg" shows it. The unusal part about this one at Clarendon Palace is that they seem to have forgotten to remove the track afterwards.
Paul. This was put in when the Archaeological dig happened to move the 1000’s of tiles and spoil from one end of the site to the other. They were wagons pushed around by hand. Had lunch today with someone who remembers it.
The site was a Palace used by Henry viii as a hunting lodge, a few fields away the foundations of a spectator stand was identified using geophys. While doing my archaeology degree at Winchester in 2002 we went and did some conservation work on the site. The tall wall was one end of the great hall. Yes the hollow you want down into was the wine cellars
That big pit is the old 'Great Wine Cellar', it is marked on old plans of the Palace.
2 foot gauge (or 600mm) tracks were often used during archeological digs. I've seen them in Greece and photos of their use in Egypt. They were usual pushed, man power.
I think that is a plausible explanation
It always surprises me that we have so many historical remains - and sometimes whole buildings - in the UK that haven't got a big fence, a ticket shop and a gift shop!
That's because English Heritage don't own everything...
...yet!
Where I used to live a neolithic site possibly managed by English Heritage had a local gypsy family setup a gate, charge admission and sell postcards. The site was the Rollright Stones.
Thank you as always for today’s walking tour. Always a look back in time. Hello to Rebecca as always, and enjoy the week ahead. Really appreciate it. See you on the next, Paul. ❤❤😊😊
Good news is that alpacas are fairly docile and friendly. Bad news is that these are llamas :D Another great video, thanks Paul
Haha....
Those alpaca are indeed llamas. A bit smaller than mine but my boys have a few decades of NZ breeding that's made them grow ;)
Slightly smaller than a springbok though.... 😂
It's great to see you explore. Your curiosity is what keeps me coming back. Thanks for sharing it with us!
The use of Decauville-style hand-moveable rail sections of about 600mm or 2ft gauge has been standard for around 140years in the sugar cane industry. They came into their own in the land of their inventor during the First World War but can be seen in photos of Archaeological Diggings all over the world where there was a need to shift large amounts of overlaying spoil off site. Even where coolies were a dime a dozen they were often much more efficient. Also less likely to go on strike at inopportune times or to nick stuff.
Light portable railways were used a lot before WW2 and afterwards in building roads (!), moving spoil on building sites etc and they weren't necessarily long. Sounds a perfect solution for moving waste from your excavations, especially when manpower and trainee archaeologists were thin on the ground.
A good answer.
Ive seen the small diesels locomotives used in WW1 (on Tom Scott's or someone else ? Was green and armoured from WW1 ) they were used up to the 1950s on new housing estates moving stuff around and as stated the tracks were easily moved.
Agreed. The building of new towns such as Welwyn Garden City involved laying light railways for moving stuff around site. Welwyn was a sufficiently large development that it was worth having engines too. The main line was used to bring in materials. Lorries in those days couldn't haul anything like as large a load as they do today, so rail really was the best means of moving bulk heavy materials.
Without decent lorries / vans, one can easily see that the next best thing is a DIY railway kit with trucks. If the land was level, a few blokes could easily move a large quantity of material for very little effort (other than the digging).
Interesting to see the remains of one at an important archeological site. The history of archeology is quite interesting; the things they used to think and do with every confidence of being correct would look crazy by today's standards. Tancred Borenius, the chap who dug it up, doesn't strike me as being amongst the 1930's preeminent archeologists. If they used a light railway for moving diggings around in large quantities there's a fair chance that an awful lot has been lost / displaced in the process. I suspect that a fair amount of the subsequent excavations has involved them thinking, "now where would Borenius have dumped the soil, if he'd dug it out of here?".
@@dave_h_8742the armoured loco you're referring to sounds like a Simplex diesel. Was that the video at Amberley museum?
@@abarratt8869Yup the large council estate that was barking had their own railway during building in the 30s
I have always been fascinated by pre Roman railways.
Pre Roman!?
@@pwhitewickyeah! GEORGIUS STEVENICUS. Seriously, this looks rather like the two feet gauge quarry railways beloved of labourers to push small tipping hoppers to transport soil and stone over modest distances on a site.
Plenty of good comments on here. Just looking at the pictures of the rails and the imprint of the layout shouts 'contractor's light railway' to me, loud and clear. Until the plentiful availability of dumper trucks (the originals were converted Fordson tractors) any major construction work used light railways of about 60 cm / 2 foot gauge for muck shifting. I remember seeing a Ruston Hornsby diesel , similar to the Talyllyn's 'Midlander' , at work on the M6 at the top end of Stafford!
The same applied to archarological excavations - from memory I've seen similar equipment at Sutton Hoo. Always ask 'what might it serve?' In this case - no quarry or other natural needs in the vicinity, so clearing the site prior to preservation.
Keep 'em coming, Paul
A really enjoyable video, Paul. Small and overlooked mysteries in the landscape are a personal favourite.
Whenever I see an information board such as those in your video I take a photo of it on my tablet this giving me immediate access whilst continuing my walk and investigations. Also helpful when it's a map of the area.
Would have loved it if the trucks were somehow pulled by LLamas and those were the surviving ancestors.
Descendants? Yes, an interesting and amusing idea. Thanks for sharing. (By the way, JK Rowling made the same ancestors/descendants mistake in one of the Harry Potter books, so don't feel bad; you're in good company.)
Cool video. Love a mystery. Jogged my memory of the old Victorian sightseeing line that led from Hove to Devils Dyke views. The line is still visible at the dyke end but on a farm so needs permission to visit. There were also vernacular railways once up there, to travel up and down the hills.
The MOD deployed miles of 600mm gauge track in France to supply the Western Front (As did the Germans). It seems at least likely that track and rolling stock remaining in Britain would have been abundant (as surplus) after the war ended. So for a dig in the 30s, a likely source.
I also had the pleasure of working on canal restorations in the 70s in which "Jubilee" tracks were used to take away material from the digs. Whether this was surplus or from old quarries, I don't know.
Yes, (I believe) 600 mm guage was pretty much the standard guage for trench railways. There's a narrow guage railway museum just north of Stoke On Trent, in Apedale (the Moseley Railway Trust) which has a lot of WW1 trench railway stuff (loco's etc.). They will surely have the info about the track guage(s) used.
Id guess its like the Base near Carlisle with underground storage in case of invasion by Germany in WWII and an ammo store hiding in plaun sight.
When I visited Tretower Court in Brecknockshire back in the late 60s, there were narrow-gauge rail tracks on site. The simplest explanation was that the British Heritage equivalent of that time ( I forget the name, but it certainly wasn"t Cadw) used the tracks to remove rubble and fallen stonework to a temporary outdoor storage area, before sorting through it to help the stone masons rebuild. It was probably just for hand-pushed bogies. Suspect something similar here. And no explanation in the Wedgewood Blue guidebook either.
All history is great. Loved this. Please take care
Nice little, well presented, mystery.
It seems the archaeology spoil railway is the favourite guess, and I've not got any better idea, so it gets my vote.
Hi Paul, interesting little mystery.
The article by Rosalind Johnson seems very well researched and must be why it was installed. It does seem strange that it hasn't been removed though or mentioned on the information panels, it certainly forms part of the sites history now.
Have a great week!!
As always a very informative and interesting tour this day. Thank you for the time involved with these. Hello as always to Rebecca, and enjoy the week ahead. Always a tour I look forward to. Cheers Rebecca and Paul! ❤❤😊😊
Different and fascinating Paul, another brick in the wall of history.
As a starter for ten, there was a top secret “Z Battery” anti aircraft rocket facility based on the Clarendon estate during WW2. Perhaps a leftover from that? Just a thought. Storing Rocket reloads at a safe distance?
I have never heard of a Z battery before until you mentioned it. After a look on Google it seems the rockets only went up to 500 feet pulling a wire to catch low flying aeroplanes.
Did the military have some sort of secret assets in the area very close by that needed defending from the Hun? Please tell us more. Salisbury plain is not an area I am familiar with but I know it has a long history of military use. Your answer may be very interesting. Thanks.
@@philhawley1219 Maybe you already know so please forgive me if I’m recapping prior knowledge.Salisbury Plain and the surrounding chalk plateau has been a military research and development area for Centuries. Boscome Down and Porton Down are perhaps the most secretive installations but there are many other locations used for training and formal exercises. My first thought was that the rail is so heavily eroded that it could easily be WW1 vintage. The soft ground at the excavation site would have made the ‘manpower’ railway a very efficient (and flexible) way for Archaeologists to move spoil around that site.
I thought this might be answered by looking at the aerial photo libraries that were amassed before during and after the war by the RAF but the Historic England archive does not cover the palace except with modern photos
The underground digging makes me think of the Mineries on top of Mendips at Priddy
Tin mining
With the rail tracks there I wonder ?!?!
Lead/silver not tin
OK, so this is how the conversation goes "mate, what shall we do with this piece of old rail track. I wos gonna take down the scrapper.... Na mate, let's take it up the old Palace and bury it, that'll screw with their minds".😊
You know, I'm certain that's how Stonehenge started.
Thank you for the fascinating video. I reckon the Victorians used these "railways", small gauge tracks with little trolleys on them, pulled by animals or humans, far more frequently than we realise. I live on a farm in Sussex, and there are a few yards of very small gauge track poking out of one of our ditches. About 100 yards away from this, on our land, there is an area which was clearly quarried for brick clay. "Kiln Lane" is just down the road and my guess is they used a simple trolley system to convey the clay up to the road and then on to the local brick kiln.
Here in Shropshire we have similar tracks around the small lead and barytes mines. The biggest mines used steam locomotives and in one instance a four mile long cableway.
Alpaca drawn? 😂
The use of railway lines as we know them actually descended from -mostly- coal pits, open cast pits and granite quarries- all of which used horses to pull the loads- some of the more enterprising, mountain side ones used the weight of the loaded truck going DOWN to pull the empty truck UP- thus would need two parallel lines. Never equate "railway lines" with "locomotive" There were, of course, static locomotives that, using cables, did the work of horses before they finally got around to putting the thing on wheels. Love these little gems here, though, the only ones I will take seriously!
What caught my eye is on the google image around the 11 second mark is what looks like a roundhouse and turntable foundations marked by the trees on the left side of the shot.
Small wheeled or tracked contractors plant is quite a recent thing. Up to around the 1950s there was really nothing between the navvy's wheelbarrow and huge steel tracked cable excavators, apart from temporary narrow gauge railway setups like this. The ubiquitous site dumper started to appear around the 50s. The roadbuilding section of the Amberly Chalk Pits Museum is a good place to see the evolution of the equipment.
I wonder if Rail Map Online would be interested in adding the railway to their map.
What I don't know is how they would classify it. Whether it is "Industrial", "Narrow Gauge" or even "Historical Tramway".
Great point. Will drop him a message.
So interesting . Thank you. Will check out Rosalind Johnson. Loved the peaceful alpacas.
Possibly built as a way of carrying out robbed stone from the old palace to use in other buildings?
Read the report Paul put in the description. Spoiler alert: no, it was for an archaeological dig.
Ruins are often jokingly called 'Above ground quarries' as it doesn't take long for a building to be stripped of it's finery (fireplaces, window mullions etc) and then of it's walls to build newer structures.
This was relatively common Decauville type portable railways were/are a very efficient method of moving excavated material.
They can be easily laid and easily removed. Such railways being virtually infinitely reusable
Also they do very little damage to the site. I would guess that the skips would have been man powered given the length of the line.
My favourite example of such a railway being the line that Howard Carter installed to assist with the excavation of Tutankhamen's tomb!
They are sold excellent photos of the Pharaohs grave goods being transported on the 600mm gauge railway!
Going by the history of Clarendon Palace, the very first royal to stay at the Palace was my 28th great-grandfather Henry I and his wife Adelicia of Louvain. Awesome history 😊
Very cool!
We have been up there a couple of times and still find it interesting. We'll done
Two foot gauge railways were very common in quarries and mines, man pushed or hauled with ponies. The main thing is the trucks were standardised and could be purchased new from a catalogue or second hand.
A lot of this stuff was manufactured and used in the trenches of the first world war. All this equipment was sold off after, so it was available and cheap.
It is worth noting that iron and steel couldn't effectively be recycled until the late 60s. The scrap man collected stuff to be sold on and repurposed.
very light rail was considered to be an efficient way to move things on any industrial site. it is the easiest way to move materials. there was very light rail behind the bakery and shops across the road from where i grew up. as kids we dug it up and found not just rails but a set of points for a second track and what may have been a turntable. this was all to move supplies to the back of the bakery. i still have the scar on my finger where i cut myself on buried glass. my friend's mother was horrified. i remember her holding me over a concrete trough to wash all the dirt off. i had never seen blood before this. yes, i was really young when this happened.
Here in the Pacific Northwest -- the US part, although I bet this was also the case on the other side of the border in Canada -- when harvesting timber logging companies constructed temporary rail lines to move the logs. Yes, they would lay down a mile or two of track, haul timber along it to where they could be either milled or moved to another method of conveyance (sometimes assembled into a raft to be moved down a river, sometimes a permanent railroad) for processing. Then when that stretch of forest had been clear-cut, the track would be pulled & moved to another stretch of woods.
Once they were finished with clear-cutting the area, they would leave a lot of the equipment behind because they were not worth the cost of recovery. I remember as a boy scout camping in the Coast Range of Oregon & finding these abandoned machines rotting/rusting on the grass-covered slopes.
Industrial archaeology is a subject non-specialists are largely unaware even exists.
P.S. Anyone else notice the second piece of rail poking out of the ground to the right of the longer piece? Paul must have been in a hurry -- or had too many things he wanted to include in this piece -- to mention it.
@@llywrch7116 , ah yes, temporary timber tracks. i lived next door to where a horse-drawn timber track (timber rails too, not steel) was built from the nearby hills to transport timber to where it was transferred to barges back in the 19th century. if you run a timber company, timber rails are a lot cheaper than steel.
Very interesting. I'm looking forward to your video about the differences between a llama and an alpaca!
Depending on how early the railway is, possibly for people to take the stone away for other buildings. In Kent, Tonbridge Castle was mostly knocked down in the late 1700's? early 1800's? for the stone, the gatehouse is still there, but much of the rest was reused to build locks on a canal on the river medway, near to Tonbridge.
Oh my, did you see that face? Paul was clearly disappointed that the Friends of Clarendon Palace didn't mention the railway on their website.
it's a curiousity though. I like Alpakas.
Tancred's tracks. He liked railways. The writer John Harris asserts that Borenius was sent by the British MI6 to Geneva in January 1941.The perilous journey was via Bristol (Whitchurch) to Lisbon (Sintra) by KLM DC-3, then to Geneva by train across Spain & Vichy France. Wiki.
That's 30lb rail. Commonly used in quarrying & mining applications so would have been easy to obtain. Moving spoil with hand pushed carts is plausible if the gradient is small otherwise a windlass would be needed.
Hi Paul, my guess would be a military rifle range. 60cm/2ft gauge short lines were often used for moving targets to and from the butts. I couldn't see too clearly if there were the usual earthworks for a rifle range, although the site may have been cleared. It's not too far from Salisbury so there possibly was a military presence in the area in WW1 or WW2.
I have used several firing ranges (e.g. Bisley in Surrey) with this sort of installation, so fairly common. Targets would be stacked on a trolley and pushed by hand into storage sheds, or hauled by a tiny Lister petrol loco.
Fascinating riddle - solved. I wonder if other archaeological excavations made use of light railways.
I never come across one to be fair.
I totally enjoyed this Paul-Thank you
I’ve ran into a similar problem, apart from it’s with a narrow gauge railway around redcar and cleveland, i literally cannot find any info on it at all, but it apparently exists.
Dude that's terrifying! You are so lucky those llamas must have fed earlier in the morning. Savage predators.
My guess, prior to reading the accompanying article, was that it had been used to remove stone for reuse elsewhere. Sometime in the 19th century. The actual usage makes more sense. I'm pleased that my guess was wrong.
Thinking about it through the video, would of thought they were just dumped there but towards the end... I know it not that and cannot think what it is, great video
Why would anyone carry old railway lines to dump in the middle of a field? The option for most people would be to take them to a scrap dealer and be paid.
There is a comment above from DottyDora which I think explains everything.
Flashbacks of Raiders of the Lost Ark come to mind. Makes absolute sense.
Oh, it's the SQUIGGLY line. I was looking for straight ones. 😀
I do love a good mystery! Looking forward to a possible update in the future? 😊
600 mm = 60 cm = 23.622 inches, rounded up to 2 feet. This was "Decauville" gauge in France, a whole system of sectional track, cars, and small steam or gas locos. The failed French Panama Canal effort used Decauville system, as during planning in France, they had no idea of the scope of the job. Most of the trench railways in WW-I were 60 cm, the Germans called them Feldbahn. After the war, a huge amount of track and equipment was available, and used in many places for construction or hauling agricultural produce. There are photos of Sherman tanks on French roads, with 60 cm track running along next to the road. I saw some of this on the hillside vineyards along the Mosel River in Germany in 1970.
To this I'd like to add: Decauville system was invented in 1875, I think, as an emergency method to bring in the harvest from a particularly muddy field. The track was portable, that was really the idea. Actually I saw a facsimile of a late 19th century catalogue from Orenstein & Koppel (Berlin) which looked pretty much like a model railway catalogue with rail sections, switches and, of course, engines and carriages. Only this was the real thing.
What I'd like to stress: these railways was used not only in quarries, industries and such, but also in the agriculture. Although I find it plausible the railway was WW1 surplus, I think you shouldn't rule out it might be older than that.
Is there by any chance a manufacturing year stamped into the rail (or manufacturer or original buyer)? In Sweden this was commonplace, although it can be misleading as I once found a rail manufactured in 1923 in a track which I knew was laid out in 1980...)
In "days of yore," before the advent of dumper trucks, tipper trucks, and the like, you put down a temporary line of rails if you wanted to move stuff. Some were mechanised using locomotives, but many were not, employing horse power, man power, or rope haulage using a fixed donkey engine. They were actually quite numerous, though many, being temporary, were never recorded. Excellent bit of research though.
Possibly used to remove spoil from archaeological dig, or to rob out old stonework in the early 19th century to be used elsewhere?
Fascinating!!
If I remember correctly, the railway was installed during the early excavation work to carry away the spoil. I believe the work was carried out partly as a job creation scheme in the 1920s, possibly for veterans, and a huge amount of spoil was generated so with military precision, a light railway was used.
The excavations took place between 1933 and 1939.
"Right, let's go back and look at the sign." Hee hee hee 🤣🤣🤣
They used portable narrow gauge railways in WWI to supply the trenches and also around the Welsh slate quarries. Possibly sourced as either ex army stock (which given its location near Salisbury plain and several army camps is possible), might have been going cheap and local enough that the site Forman would have seen it as a sound investment to aid efficiency of the excavation?
Interesting stuff though Paul.
I knew straight away what it was when you showed it running to a pile of earth and rubble. It's actually not that uncommon for large historical sites, only unusual thing here is that they actually left the track behind. Other historical sites excavated in the 1900s also had little tracks put down and used mine drams to move large amounts of stone and earth. Neath Abbey's excavations had such a system I believe.
Wow!
there is usally a date on the side of the track witch would tell you the time it was forged
Super interesting!
"There wouldn't be a quarry here" you say. But, erm, an old stone building falling apart does constitute a good quarry. Here in Denmark, once you open your eyes, we have quite a bit of stoneworked agricultural buldings close to fortress ruins and apparently built with material - quader stones - from them. I submit that looking for nearby buildings that are unusually "stony" will perhaps be an interesting quest. All of that may of course predate the rail line .... or perhaps the estate used the ruins as a source for road fill.
There's also a red flying saucer in some of the pictures....
hi again Paul , yet another interesting video, could the tracks be just for local use, like you said moving stuff like soil and other goods, , it is very strange , well done and thank you 😊
Of that vintage and in the UK surely it would be 2 foot gauge not 600 mm
I agree but if you set a gauge of 2ft between the rail centres then you get about 600mm between the inner edges.
Today we almost always measure gauge between the inner edges but I believe that was not always the practice in the past, e.g. with some Welsh mine and quarry railways.
That said, whilst British made Hudson track was made to 2ft gauge, I expect French made Decauville track would have been 600mm gauge.
Before internal combustion powered tractors became ubiquitous, it was quite common to use light narrow gauge railways on farms and in industry.
A lot of 2-foot gauge track was actually 23.5 inches (ie 600 mm). Standard gauge has long been 1435mm, rather than 4 foot 8 and a bit.
I have read of Henry ll and Queen Eleanor using this Palace in the mid 12th Century?
I think so yes.
Wow! Paul this is interesting! I think you meant 600 mm, or 60 cm! 2' Guage!
you would think that there would be some sort of passing point at either end of the line , unless they were lifting the empty carts on and off so the full ones could be moved away and emptied ?.
but that depends on how big the dig was as it was hard to see the size of the spoil heap as the heap will be next to the line where they tip the spoil out thats assuming they were side tipped as it says each would carry 12 barrow loads which isnt a small load even back then.
which then begs the question of why would the estate have a portable railway line in the first place ? , landscaping ? A small quarry operation , demolition of an out building / s ?.
It was quite common to simply lay a hundred yards or so of track and push a skip wagon or perhaps two up and down it. points would bbe an added complication. With 2ft/600mm gauge track that would be easy for just one person to do. Paul Decauville, who developed the portable railway (with rail welded to steel sleepers in panels that one or two men could carry) for his won farm in 1875, began with 400 mm track with wagons entirely hand or animal propelled though he later focussed on 500mm and particularly 600mm gauge track and introduced locos . II m not sure when it acquired the generic name of "Jubilee" track in Britain but the major manufacturer was R. Hudson of Leeds who I believe licensed the designs from Decauville.
I'm always knocked out by how old things can be in England , U.K. My location , Texas , declared it's independence from Mexico on March 2nd , 1836 and you have things a millennium before that .
I thought it may have been used to take stone away when the buildings were not being used, but someone has already suggested that the track was used by the excavators...
Awesome.
07:07 60mm gauge? Yeah, right. Sloppy.
See description, sloppy.
Had I not seen the answers about archaologists, two thoughts came up: (1) It was a light railway used by the military, who have an enormous imprint on the Salisbury area; (2) Someone using the site in the past as a quarry for building materials in the local area - it isn't unusual for ancient sites to be pilfered for dressed stone, slates/tiles/flagstones, etc. Is that despicable or would it be classed as 'Slightly iffy recycling?' 🤔🤔🤔
My first thought was that someone built it to haul stones away from the ruins and repurpose them. But that had probably already been done by the time they invented railways.
Hi, interested to know if you’ve looked into the disused railway from Fullerton Wherewell Forton Longparish etc? I remember hearing that these branch lines were only built if businesses funded them for factories mines etc. It appears to be quite an engineering project to take this route but why?
Were they simply robbing the stone from the site? By the looks of it there was an awful lot more of it there at one point.
It was the practice of locals in many parts of Europe living near an abandoned stone building to reuse the stones from the structure for more immediate needs, such as mending walls or building churches & cottages. Historians & archeologists are often pleasantly surprised at what is uncovered when an old building is remodeled.
I would have assumed that llamas and alpacas, as camelids, would be ill-tempered.
They seemed chill on the day.
Alpacas are very relaxed animals.
@@N0C0MPLY Those are Llamas
So it was a 2ft railway hand pushed similar to the ones used in the front lines WWI.
Flat bottom rail which started to be used around 1830 iirc
That rail is the flat bottom variety Paul, so I am not convinced that is that old.
I was thinking 1920s???
Excavations began at Clarendon in 1933.
Was it to ease the stone robbing on an industrial scale. Why quarry and work new stone when you can just pinch old stuff?
I didn't consider that to be fair
@@pwhitewick just a suggestion, people wanting to preserve the past is a relatively modern phenomenon.
Beware of the Alpacas 🦙!! 🙏⭐️⚔️🌍
Think you might mean 600mm gauge, Paul. 60mm is pretty close to a Gauge II garden railway! Bigger than most, but a bit too small to ride on or do useful work.
You are correct
@@pwhitewick Somehow I could see a King Henry or two enjoying a garden railway, and it makes sense he'd want something bigger and grander than your run-of-the-mill G scale... Make it one bigger and call it H scale!
So they had a trackway to help with mining the building stone out of the palace?
Yes Paul - what a Mystery Railway - may be something to do with the building perhaps??? 🤔🚂🚂🚂
My thoughts was that it may have been a railway of convenience to move bits around the estate especially if was beginning to sprawl. However, @DottyDora seems to have the answer below that makes good sense.
I think there are more horse drawn tramways around the world than we think and the romans, greeks and the Egyptians did use them to shift stone plus mine the gold copper lead across the world. Wooden track would of been torn up to re-use same for iron and so very hard to prove anything of the true age of the tram / railway pre steam era.
Definitely Llamas
The railway was Probably there to just aid excavations and earthmoving.
Apparently someone was diggin oles and needed a way of movin the dirt. Must’ve been quite something to warrant making tracks.
Not so unusual, normal construction / earth move methode for that given era.
Look up Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, it had it's own 600mm railway line when it was "rebuild" between 1901 bis 1908 -> wikipedia set to German "Feldbahn der Hohkönigsburg" shows it.
The unusal part about this one at Clarendon Palace is that they seem to have forgotten to remove the track afterwards.
It’s been so wet how about a Source of the Thames revisit? Great vids!
That's a very good call. Probably somewhere up in the Peak District by now
I am fiddling "Swinging on a 'Gate" on my Violin.....
So, railway for a 'quarry'.....or did they use the rail line to remove stone from the original building to reuse elsewhere....