The Tenbury & Bewdley Railway
By the 1850s, when it seemed that every booming town and village in Britain was demanding and getting a railway line, the inhabitants of Tenbury felt left behind. Tenbury had mineral waters to equal those of Malvern, but the want of accommodation and the state of the roads in the Teme Valley could be of no comfort to those invalids visiting the spa. The weekly produce waggons bound for the Birmingham markets were often delayed due to the difficult, hilly road to Bewdley and Kidderminster becoming impassable after heavy rains. Expenses were then increased by having to travel over a longer route through Worcester.
The Wyre Forest, a few miles north of Tenbury, was exploited commercially for timber as a building material, for charcoal making, basket making and tanning, whilst workable coal seams of the Wyre Forest coalfield outcrop south of the Dowles Brook and a whole host of small mines produced a type of coal much favoured by the hop dryers of Tenbury because of its sulphur content. This coal could not easily find bigger markets until an efficient transport system materialised which could get across the barrier of the River Severn and reach the booming industrial growth of the Black Country and Birmingham to the east.
This history begins with the sale of a part-completed, near derelict canal to a railway company, and records what happened in the ensuing one hundred and four years until the closure of the line.
Hardback with dust jacket, 202 pages, black & white photographs and track plans
Condition: Very Good
ISBN: 9781874103271
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