Beaminster Tunnel

Beaminster Tunnel or Horn Hill Tunnel is a 345ft road tunnel on the A3066 road between Beaminster and Mosterton in Dorset, England. The tunnel was constructed between 1830–1832; it was one of the first road tunnels built in Britain, and is the only pre-railway road tunnel in the country still in use. It was built to take a toll road underneath a steep hill to the north of Beaminster and make it easier for horse-drawn traffic to travel from the coast to the hinterland of Dorset. It underwent significant repairs in 1968 and again in 2009, but in 2012 a torrential rainstorm caused a landslide that resulted in the partial collapse of the tunnel's north entrance and the deaths of two people.ConstructionThe tunnel is constructed from brick with walls 3ft thick, faced with Hamstone. It runs for 345ft under Horn Hill, a 650ft promontory to the north of Beaminster. The hill presented a major barrier to travellers passing from the newly enlarged harbour at West Bay on the Dorset coast to the hinterland; according to a contemporary writer, the hill was "a great impediment to the communication between the lower portion of Dorsetshire and a considerable district of Somerset, particularly with regard to Bridport harbour." The main road passed over the hill, climbing almost 500 feet in a mile-and-a-half (150 metres in two kilometres). The steep gradient of 1-in-6 (17%) made passage difficult for horse-drawn transport. In the late 1820s, a Beaminster solicitor named Giles Russell proposed that the owners of the toll road over the hill, the Bridport 2nd District Turnpike Trust, should seek to build a tunnel under it to shorten and flatten the road. Russell played a key role in getting the project underway and managed to raise the £13,000 required through loans and contributions from many of Beaminster's artisans and traders.