Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

An extensive area of railway sidings built in WWI as part of Richborough Port, a major WWI port serving allied troops on the Western Front. Use of the facility continued after the war into the early 1920s as part of the salvage operation returning material from the Front after which it was decommissioned. An attempt was made to run the port as commercial operation but was unsuccessful. The facility was brought back in to military use in WWII and this appears to have been particularly associated with the preparations for the D-Day landings. The sidings were removed after WWII.

Monument Types

• RAILWAY SIDING (Modern - 1916 AD to 1945 AD)

Full description

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An extensive area of railway sidings built in WWI as part of Richborough Port (MWX43487), a major WWI port serving allied troops on the Western Front [1]. Please see MWX43487 for details of the site as a whole. The sidings were built for traffic carrying material to and from the Western Front via the train ferry dock and wharf to the immediate east (Mke41999 & Mke42008). Use of the facility continued after the war into the early 1920s as part of the salvage operation returning material from the Front after which it was decommissioned. An attempt was made to run the port as commercial operation but was unsuccessful [1]. The facility was brought back in to military use in WWII and this appears to have been particularly associated with the preparations for the D-Day landings as there is little trace of activity at the site into to the early 1940s. RAF vertical aerial photographs taken in 1942 show the sidings as empty, with the only activity in the entire area being a possible pillbox (MWX43261) under construction [2-3]. A US Air Force vertical aerial photograph taken in April 1944 however shows a bustling facility full of carriages and truck adjacent to the array of landing crafts at the wharf awaiting loading (Mke41999 & Mke42008).

The sidings were removed after WWII and the only visible traces of them on recent aerial photography are slight earthworks of former embankments at the eastern end of the site [4-5].

<1> Robert Butler, 01/01/99, Richborough Port (Bibliographic reference). Ske14148.

<4> Next Perspectives consortium via English Heritage, 2003, 2007, Next Perspective PGA georeferenced aerial photograph data, PGA_TR3262_2003-08-14.jpg (Graphic material). SWX15711.

<5> Next Perspectives consortium via English Heritage, 2003, 2007, Next Perspective PGA georeferenced aerial photograph data, PGA_TR3263_2003-08-14.jpg (Graphic material). SWX15711.

Sources and further reading

Related records