Industrial link should be preserved

3:25pm Thu Jan 26, 2012

I was saddened to read that a planning application had been made to demolish the old tuck shop on Farndon Road, Newark, near the Spring House pub, and replace it with yet another dwelling (Tuck Shop Site Eyed For Home, Advertiser, January 12).

I doubt that many people today realise that this “awful little hut” as it was described by Newark and Sherwood district councillor Mr Tony Roberts, is, in fact, part of Newark’s industrial heritage, and is worthy of restoration and preservation.

As a five-year-old, living in Dorner Avenue, off Farndon Road, I walked every day to Christ Church Infants’ School.

Occasionally I was delayed by a man with a red flag who held up the traffic (there wasn’t much, as it was wartime) to allow a steam locomotive hauling some quarry trucks along a narrow-gauge line to cross the road at this point.

This small building was part of the infrastructure of the mineral tramway that ran from Cafferata’s Hawton gypsum and brickworks to Spring Wharf on the River Trent, which is now the site of a marina.

Reference to The Railways Of Newark by Michael Vanns, shows that the tramway dated back to around the 1840s and was built by Messrs Wilson and Robinson who ran the gypsum and clay quarries before they were taken over by Cafferata and Co in 1882.

The book has several pictures of engines used by Cafferata’s, one of which, built in 1901, is pictured at Spring Wharf.

Mr Vanns suggests that this line could well have been Newark’s second oldest railway.

Up to the early 1950s this line was, partly at least, still in existence and ran behind the gardens of houses in Devon Road.

Originally it crossed Hawton Road and Sconce Hills to the crossing mentioned above.

On a map this would have shown up as an almost straight line from the quarry to Spring Wharf.

Before the marina was built it was still possible to see rusty rails and a set of points through the gate in the wall opposite the ‘tuck shop.’

Even in my childhood days, the little building served as a sweet shop as well as for the storage of flags and other tramway items.

If I had a penny in my pocket I might have bought a fibrous liquorice stick or a sherbet fountain, there being very few sweets around in those days.

As it appears to be the only remaining vestige of this tramway at the Wharf end of the line, it would be shameful is this building was allowed to be destroyed.

It would be good to see it restored and preserved, and due importance accorded to this historic feature.

— MALCOLM DEXTER, Newark (Full address supplied).