One of the first railways in southern England and the first in Dorset, the plateway was built by a wealthy Irish Merchant based in London Benjamin Fayle (a very good friend of Thomas Byerley - Josiah Wedgwood's nephew), to take Purbeck Ball Clay from his pits near Corfe Castle to a wharf on Middlebere Creek in Poole Harbour, a distance of some 3 miles .