FORTY years ago this month, a Wimborne landmark disappeared – to the approval of many of the town.

As the Echo reported in March 1975: “Leigh Arch has been a source of anger from a road safety point of view for quite a long time and residents have expressed their thoughts on the matter in no uncertain terms.”

The arch had carried a railway line over Leigh Road for more than a century. But it was a narrow bridge spanning the increasingly busy A31 and walking under it was a dangerous business.

Wimborne’s railway station had been closed to passengers in the early phases of the Beeching cuts in 1964. Regular goods services had stopped in 1966, and by the 1970s, the line over Leigh Arch was mainly used for supplying the Army petroleum depot at West Moors.

Concerns about the safety of Leigh Arch resulted in a petition being raised in 1973. Campaigner Winifred White handed the signatures to North Dorset MP David James following a demonstration in March 1973. Protesters carried signs saying “Down with the arch” and “We want action now, in 1973 – not 2073.”

In late 1974, the Ministry of Defence stopped using the railway line to supply the fuel depot, electing to use the road instead. The decision paved the way for the campaigners to get what they had been asked for. The track north of the decaying Wimborne station was lifted from October 1974 and in March 1975, Leigh Arch finally disappeared.

The A31 was to be widened when the bridge was down, and the Echo noted that council workmen would return the next weekend with an air-driven power hammer to knock down the abutments and prepare for the widening.

The paper presented ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures under the inevitable headline “Now you see it, now you don’t.”