Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum
After the closure of Eldon sidings all clay exports were via lorry. For several years the clay was carried from the mines across the A351 by trains to the "Lorry Drop". It was realised that the lorries could take the clay directly from the mines and the cost of maintaining a railway system avoided. The transhipment buildings were raised to accommodate the lorries beneath them and in the early 1970s the railway system sold partly into preservation and the rest scrapped. Use of narrow gauge railways continued underground at Norden No 6 & 7 mines until all mining operations ceased in 1999.
Stan Bitters
In his book "Environmental Ceramics", Bitters says that “Clay assumes powerful form in sculpture. Because of its responsive nature and its receptivity to impressions, clay is open to tremendous variety of sculptural approaches, and can be worked additively and subtractively with equal ease. Its visual mass gives it an earthy, weighty character in contrast to the liquid nature of glass or the linear character of welded steel in which a massive piece may appear to be much lighter than it is. The immediacy with which clay can be worked gives the sculpture great energy. Clay accepts and emits emotional power” (Bitters 1976, p. 77).