Isle of Wight's Shide Chalk Pit and its incredible journey

Just a minute away from the noisy traffic of St George’s Way, hidden away in Pan Lane, is a beautiful haven of peace and quiet.

The pit, a spectacular wilderness, open to the public, is a former chalk quarry, today managed by Gift to Nature, with easy access and informative signboards dotted around the site.

Apart from the sound of silence, the old quarry is a wildlife haven; with orchids, butterflies of every type, and the air alive with birdsong, all in the setting of a stunning tree-lined amphitheater.

This 1928 photo shows empty trucks waiting to be loaded with chalk. Today, keen-eyed visitors can still make out the track layout after all these years by spotting the depressions in the grass left by the railway sleepers. (Image: Alan Dinnis/County Press.)

The pit owes its existence to the cement industry and the coming of the railway in Victorian times.

The site now occupied by Vesta at the bottom of Stag Lane was once home to the West Medina Cement Mills where thousands of tons of chalk was crushed every month and burnt with clay to make Portland cement.

The chalk was brought in by river from the mainland but the arrival of the Newport to Sandown railway line meant chalk could now be obtained locally.

Shide station on the line was just a stone’s throw away from an existing chalk quarry and during the summer of 1895, a deep cutting and short tunnel under Pan Lane was blasted through into the pit allowing a branch line to be laid from the station into the quarry.

By the early 1970s, when this photograph was taken, the quarry had been abandoned for over thirty years and had become a playground for local children. Picture by Brian Greening/County Press. (Image: Picture by Brian Greening/County Press.)

Soon, chalk trains, made up of nine or ten trucks, were shifting 30,000 tons of chalk a year to the mills.

The trains left the quarry to run down into Shide station and from there were hauled to the Cement Mill, a journey of just over two miles.

In 1913, 40,000 tons of chalk were blasted out of the quarry, but by 1937, that figure had risen to 50,000 tons a month.

In August of that year, the Southern Railway Magazine ran a feature on the busy line, which was re-printed by the County Press under the headline: Isle of Wight Cement Train.

Today, the former quarry is managed by Gift to Nature and is open to the public, a haven of peace and tranquillity, even though it is just 100 metres from a busy main road. Informative signboards dotted around the site tell the story of its former glory. (Image: Picture by Alan Stroud/County Press.)

It read: “If a prize were presented for the neatest train on the Southern Railway, it would be won by the Isle of Wight cement train.

“With its little green ‘Terrier’ locomotive, and string of yellow and blue trucks, this train is the most pleasing sight in the Island.

“The Terrier engine is spotlessly clean, and the wagons no less so, their contents of chalk, seen in the midday sun, are as white as a newly washed sheet.

“This little train confines itself to the two miles between the pits at Shide and the mills on the Medina River and shows its exclusiveness in travelling backwards through Newport station on its way to the mills, for there is no run-round there.

“The mill consumes 50,000 tons of chalk each month, conveyed in some 6,000 wagon loads, working three trips each day.”

Sadly, it was not to last.

In 1944, Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers, owners of West Medina Cement Mills, announced that after nearly 100 years, production of cement at Dodnor would cease and the plant was closed.

There were moves to re-open the mills, but in 1946, the Chamber of Commerce threw in the towel, the County Press reporting: “The Chamber of Commerce said there seemed little hope of the Cement Mills being reopened.

“Sir Vere Hobart said it was a monstrous thing that one of the major industries of the area should be restricted in this way.”

At one time the mills employed 100 men, many of whom, now returning from the war, were without employment.

Following closure, the site then became a distribution centre for the Blue Circle cement company.

In 1952, it was proposed that the quarry should become a refuse tip.

Luckily, the proposal was thrown out by the county council, due to “the amount of stench which would emanate from the tip."

In 1967, Cheeks were persuaded to buy the quarry as a suitable base for their operations, having been told by the chairman of the planning committee that planning permission was a foregone conclusion.

It wasn’t. Due to public opposition, planning permission was refused, leaving Cheeks the owner of a white elephant.

By 1983, the pit had passed into council ownership and in a far-sighted move, Stephen Ross, the Island’s MP and leader of the county council, authorised the spending of £1,000 to transform the pit into a wildlife refuge.

Forty years later, Shide chalkpit is one of Newport’s unsung treasures.