It is difficult for us now to visualise what the area would have looked like in the early years of the 19th century.

Almost the entire length of the original railway within Dorset crossed ancient heathland - described by writer & traveller John Claridge in 1793 as a "most dreary waste". Much of this 'dreary waste' has now disappeared under housing or light industry, or been allowed, through abandonment of centuries-old practices of management (planned or otherwise) to decline to a few small pockets.