Yesterday's glorious weather found me in Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire, from where I walked to Wilton Windmill and then into the picturesque village of the same name (not to be confused with its namesake close to Salisbury). Then  I walked close to the site of Dodsdown Brickworks.

In 1902 a two-mile light railway (but marked on Ordnance Survey maps as a tramway) was constructed from Grafton and Burbage Station to the Brickworks to convey bricks for the building of Tidworth Barracks, which was completed in 1910, the line being dismantled just after. See Journals – Bedwyn History Society.  In August 1907 Richard Haldane, Secretary of State for War, confirmed in the House of Commons that the War Office had rejected bricks made at Dodsdown because they did not comply with specifications.

Unsurprisingly given its short life there are no signs at all of the tramway, though I gather a brick kiln remains on private land.

There's so much history crammed into the locality, with the Kennet & Avon Canal (including the Bruce tunnel and Crofton Beam Engines), evidence of the complex MSWJR junction with the GWR, memorial plaques from the original monumental masons in Great Bedwyn, Wolf Hall, Savernake Forest and the Duchess of Somerset's Hospital in Froxfield.