The Middlebere Plateway, or Middlebere Tramway, was a horse-drawn plateway

Plateway

A plateway is an early kind of railway or tramway or wagonway, with a cast iron rail. They were mainly used for about 50 years up to 1830, though some continued later....

 on the Isle of Purbeck

Isle of Purbeck

The Isle of Purbeck, not a true island but a peninsula, is in the county of Dorset, England. It is bordered by the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the north. Its western boundary is less well...

 in the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 county of Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

. One of the first railways in southern England and the first in Dorset, the plateway was built by a very wealthy London Merchant Benjamin Fayle ( a member of Lloyds and the London Institution), to take Purbeck Ball Clay

Purbeck Ball Clay

Purbeck Ball Clay is a concentration of ball clay found on the Isle of Purbeck in the English county of Dorset.-Geology:The main concentration of ball clay in Dorset is to the north of the Purbeck Hills centred around Norden. Ball clays are sedimentary in origin...

 from his pits near Corfe Castle to a wharf

Wharf

A wharf or quay is a structure on the shore of a harbor where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers.Such a structure includes one or more berths , and may also include piers, warehouses, or other facilities necessary for handling the ships.A wharf commonly comprises a fixed...

 on Middlebere Creek in Poole Harbour

Poole Harbour

Poole Harbour is a large natural harbour in Dorset, southern England, with the town of Poole on its shores. The harbour is a drowned valley formed at the end of the last ice age and is the estuary of several rivers, the largest being the Frome. The harbour has a long history of human settlement...

, a distance of some 3.5 miles (5.6 km).
Near contemporary accounts indicate that the line was built in 1805 and opened in 1806, and it is present on a map of 1811.