This seems is not just a humble, unassuming house brick.  It represents the sad story of one of the town’s most ambitious entrepreneurs.

 

William Betts was a wealthy businessman who made a fortune from farming, brick making and running the family businesses.

He dreamed of creating a huge, self-supporting market garden and at first the dream came true.

Instead of relying on horses and carts to transport his produce, Betts built a seven-mile-long private railway to carry his produce to Diss Station for its onward journey to the markets of London.

 

The trains from London returned with horse manure, collected from the city’s streets and stables to fertilise his ever-growing estate. Betts introduced steam power for ploughing and threshing and built a windmill and a sawmill. He employed smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and basketmakers (for packing produce), brick and tile makers and agricultural workers to grow the vegetables and care for the sheep, cattle and pigs. 

 

The Betts railway ran from Diss Station to Frenze Hall and Scole with branches serving the fields

en route, his two locomotives were not designed for passenger travel, although locals working the fields used them when they needed a lift.  Betts himself was disabled and moved around the estate in a carriage, pulled by a donkey.

In 1884 his heir, William Hammond Betts, died at the age of 38. By now there were signs that the market garden was running into debt. Betts, a widower, died the following year aged 73, “frustrated and disappointed” according to railway historian Roger Darsley.

 

The estate was gradually broken up, and everything was sold from locomotives to butter knives. Other assets included nearly half a million bricks and 90,000 drainpipes.

 

It was once thought that Betts’ great enterprise began in 1850, but this is contested by Roger Darsley whose research suggests it began in about 1868. Darsley’s detailed report ‘The Scole Railway’ can be found in the archive section of the museum.

 

These days is still possible to walk some of the Betts railway. One reminder is what was once described as The Great Barn. It is now Diss Business Centre, in Dark Lane, Scole.  It is a striking building – brick of course – with large arched doorways.

 

While there are few traces of the railway, Betts bricks can be found in buildings all over Diss, including Sunnyside and Mission Road.

The museum’s brick is 23 cm long, 6 cm high and 11 cm wide and almost certainly made from local clay from Betts’ estate.