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Wollaton Hall near the Southern terminus of the Wollaton Wagonway. The Wollaton Wagonway (or Waggonway), built between October 1603 and 1604 in the East Midlands of England by Huntingdon Beaumont in partnership with Sir Percival Willoughby, [1] has sometimes been credited as the world's first overground wagonway and therefore regarded as a significant step in the development of railways.
It has been suggested that these are somewhat older than that at Wollaton. [10] [11] The Middleton Railway in Leeds, which was built in 1758 as a wagonway, later became the world's first operational railway (other than funiculars), albeit in an upgraded form. In 1764, the first railway in America was built in Lewiston, New York as a wagonway. [12]
[citation needed] The wagonway ran from Strelley, where Beaumont held mining leases, to Wollaton Lane. [1] Beaumont was a successful coal prospector and an innovator in the development of mining techniques. A key innovation currently attributed to him is the introduction of boring rods to assist in finding coal without sinking a shaft.
A wagonway was built at Prescot, near Liverpool, sometime around 1600, possibly as early as 1594. Owned by Philip Layton, the line carried coal from a pit near Prescot Hall to a terminus about half a mile away. [2] Another wagonway was Sir Francis Willoughby's Wollaton Wagonway in Nottinghamshire built between 1603 and 1604 to carry coal. [3]
The wagonway was completed in 1604, ... Natural History Museum in Wollaton Hall; The Wollaton Dovecote Museum is a little-known museum on Dovecote Drive.
1604 – Huntingdon Beaumont, partner of landowner Sir Percival Willoughby, built the Wollaton Wagonway, running from mines at Strelley to Wollaton in Nottinghamshire. It was approximately two miles in length. Beaumont built three further wagonways shortly afterwards near Blyth, Northumberland, to service the coal and salt trades.
Francis Willoughby's father, Sir Henry Willoughby, had inherited Wollaton and other properties including 'lucrative coal pits' at the death of his uncle, Sir John Willoughby, on 10 January 1549. However, only a few months later, on 27 August 1549, Sir Henry Willoughby was slain on Mousehold Heath in the suppression of Kett's rebellion.
This probably preceded the Wollaton Wagonway of 1604, which has hitherto been regarded as the first. [9] [10] In Shropshire, the gauge was usually narrow, to enable the wagons to be taken underground in drift mines.