The Forest of Dean. .....

[rogerfarnworth]

My wife and I enjoy an annual holiday in the Forest of Dean. We have been there almost every year since the year 2000. During that time we have enjoyed exploring a number of the different railway routes in the forest and have begun to realise just how complex a network of tramways supported the standard gauge railways which themselves had replaced much earlier tramways. I hope this thread will be of interest to some.

This is the first of a series of blog posts about the forest and its tramways and focusses on Lydney Harbour and its tramroads:

https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2017/09/26/lydney-harbour

[DCB]

It's interesting. But, a couple of things are missing.  The Forest of Dean is the Eastern end of the South Wales coal field and the coal is principally house coal suitable for domestic use.  A short distance to the west is Locomotive coal used by the GWR and further in to Wales is Steam coal, very slow burning, absolutely useless for domestic use or railway locos, ideal for steam ships.

The Forest coal was highly prized and production continued to increase even after the catastrophic miners strike of 1926from  which  the steam coal industry never really recovered.   

The Severn is tidal, sort of.  The fresh water river flows south west and the brackish tide comes in over the top of the fresh water flow (It makes swimming lethal as the cold "Undertow" sweeps the unwary downstream) so for a lot of the day the river appears to flow North East.  This means Trows, specialist Severn "Barges" can travel upstream on the tides with no propulsion, and back down again as the tide recedes.  Bullo Pill to Framilode where the Stroudwater Canal joins the Severn and on to Stroud was a much used route, albeit difficult as the Stroudwater had no towpath for horses.    Forest Coal was therefore readily available to the busy industrial Stroud Valley long before the railway age, and also after laborious tran shipment from short fat Trows to long Narrowboats at Brimscombe Port to the Thames and Severn Canal the towns of Cirencester, Cricklade, and Lechlade, possibly Swindon via the North Wilts, could get Forest of Dean coal

 

Later in railway days you could see the local colliery wagons "Parkend" in particular over a large chunk of the south west of  England going Lydney Gloucester - GWR and via the Severn Bridge to the Midland Bristol - Birmingham line with its branches to Dursley and Stroud.

 

The Forest Tramways with big modern looking full size steam locos with flangeless wheels running on plateways is fascinating, I believe some were later converted to flanged wheels and ran on conventional rails.

 

Under Forest Law anyone born within the Hundred of "Sunt Bravells" has a right to dig for coal in the Forest.   My mother was born in the Forest of Dean but she managed to escape and avoided a life spent underground, hence my interest.

Edited October 31, 2022 by DCB

[Michael Hodgson]

22 minutes ago, DCB said:

Under Forest Law anyone born within the Hundred of "Sunt Bravells" has a right to dig for coal in the Forest.   My mother was born in the Forest of Dean but she managed to escape and avoided a life spent underground, hence my interest.

As you say, the Forest is crossed by lots of former railways/tramways used for the transport of coal and a few other minerals I believe; a lot of the coal was from adits rather than deep underground.

 

I lived for about a year in LLandogo, other side of the Wye from St Briavels, and always hoped the Monmouth branch would reopen as a preserved line, but it was not to be.  In the morning you often got a low cloud/mist which meant you couldn't see the bottom of the valley from our house, but you could see clear across to the other side.  This was before the Dean Forest lads got very far as there was still BR coal traffic from Parkend a couple of times a week; it needed a shunter or two to accompany the train to act as flagmen over the ungated level crossings as they propelled the wagons to the loading dock. 

 

The freeminers rights come from ancient laws and a special Verderers Court at the Speech House.  When my father died, we held the reception in that courtroom, which had a special meaning for my parents as he was working for the Forestry Commission and had dealings with a similar court in the New Forest, where my brother & I were born.

 

The supports for the old Severn Bridge were still there clearly visible from the A48, a good many years after the accident that closed that line.  I've got a copy of the accident report, which was done by a couple of judges under maritime legislation, rather than the usual HMRI.