HM Factory, Gretna
Encyclopedia
His Majesty's Factory, Gretna, or H.M. Factory, Gretna as it was usually known, was a UK
government World War I
Cordite
factory, adjacent to the Solway Firth
, near Gretna, Dumfries and Galloway
. It was built by the Ministry of Munitions
in direct response to the Shell Crisis of 1915
.
It straddled the Scottish
/ English
border; stretching some 12 miles (19.3 km) from Mossband near Longtown
, in the east, to Dornock
/ Eastriggs
in the west.
Construction work started in November 1915 under the general supervision of S P Pearson & Sons
. As part of the construction work, it was necessary to build two wooden township
s to house the workers, including much of the township of Gretna and the village of Eastriggs
. The influx of navvies
and munition workers was met with the introduction of liquor control
; nationalisation of pubs and brewing in the vicinity. Production of munitions started in April 1916 and by then a large proportion of its workers were women, in 1917: 11,576 women and 5,066 men.
In 1917, when production reached 800 ton
s per week, King George V
and Queen Mary
made an Official Visit to the factory.
and filters, and several water pumping stations.
The western area – Site 3 – was adjacent to Eastriggs township and Site 4, to its east, was adjacent to Gretna township.
Water was taken from the River Esk, north of Longtown through a 42 inches (106.7 cm) diameter pipe to the pump house. From there it was pumped through a 33 inches (83.8 cm) main to the reservoir and treatment works.
s (812 tonne
) of Cordite RDB (colloquially known as Devil's Porridge) weekly, more than all the other plants in Britain combined. It had its own narrow gauge
(2 ft or 610 mm) railway network with 125 miles (201.2 km) of track, and 34 railway engines, its own coal-fired power station to provide electricity for the factory and townships, a water treatment plant handling ten million gallons a day, a telephone exchange (which handled 2.5 million calls in 1918), as well as bakeries, a laundry and a police force. The laundry could clean 6,000 items daily and the bakeries made 14,000 meals a day.
as the sole government-owned cordite factory until the World War II
expansion programme. The two townships of Eastriggs and Gretna and the bakeries were also sold off.
for ammunition storage.
of Site 3, to the southeast of Eastriggs, was used in the 1930s by the Ministry of Supply
for ammunition storage. It was known as CAD Eastriggs; in the 1960s it became a sub-depot of CAD Longtown. Much of the internal transport of ammunition within CAD Eastriggs was carried out using a narrow gauge railway system. Two of the petrol locomotives from the site were used on the Duchal Moor grouse railway
near Kilmacolm
in Renfrewshire. CAD Eastriggs was also connected to the national railway network, near Eastriggs, via a link to the Glasgow and South Western Railway
.
An on-site exhibition, The Devil's Porridge is on display in Eastriggs. It takes its name from this 1917 description by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
:
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
government World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Cordite
Cordite
Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom from 1889 to replace gunpowder as a military propellant. Like gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance...
factory, adjacent to the Solway Firth
Solway Firth
The Solway Firth is a firth that forms part of the border between England and Scotland, between Cumbria and Dumfries and Galloway. It stretches from St Bees Head, just south of Whitehaven in Cumbria, to the Mull of Galloway, on the western end of Dumfries and Galloway. The Isle of Man is also very...
, near Gretna, Dumfries and Galloway
Gretna, Dumfries and Galloway
Gretna is a town in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Because they are near the Anglo-Scottish border, nearby Gretna Green and to a lesser extent Gretna, are historically linked to weddings because of the more liberal marriage laws in Scotland...
. It was built by the Ministry of Munitions
Minister of Munitions
The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort...
in direct response to the Shell Crisis of 1915
Shell Crisis of 1915
The Shell Crisis of 1915 was a shortage of artillery shells on the front lines of World War I, which largely contributed to weakening public appreciation of government of the United Kingdom because it was widely perceived that the production of artillery shells for use by the British Army was...
.
It straddled the Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
/ English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
border; stretching some 12 miles (19.3 km) from Mossband near Longtown
Longtown, Cumbria
Longtown is a small town in northern Cumbria, England, with a population of around 3,000. It is in the parish of Arthuret and on the River Esk, not far from the Anglo-Scottish border. Nearby was the Battle of Arfderydd....
, in the east, to Dornock
Dornock
Dornock is a small Scottish village in Dumfries and Galloway, situated about one mile west of Eastriggs and two miles east of Annan. Dornock is built on land which is 10 to 20 metres above sea level. Dornock Burn runs east of the village and the railway between Annan and Gretna is north of the...
/ Eastriggs
Eastriggs
Eastriggs is a village in the south of Dumfries and Galloway. It has a small number of shops, a restaurant, post office, public house, working men's club and a church...
in the west.
Construction work started in November 1915 under the general supervision of S P Pearson & Sons
Pearson PLC
Pearson plc is a global media and education company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is both the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world, with consumer imprints including Penguin, Dorling Kindersley and Ladybird...
. As part of the construction work, it was necessary to build two wooden township
Township
The word township is used to refer to different kinds of settlements in different countries. Township is generally associated with an urban area. However there are many exceptions to this rule. In Australia, the United States, and Canada, they may be settlements too small to be considered urban...
s to house the workers, including much of the township of Gretna and the village of Eastriggs
Eastriggs
Eastriggs is a village in the south of Dumfries and Galloway. It has a small number of shops, a restaurant, post office, public house, working men's club and a church...
. The influx of navvies
Navvy
Navvy is a shorter form of navigator or navigational engineer and is particularly applied to describe the manual labourers working on major civil engineering projects...
and munition workers was met with the introduction of liquor control
State Management Scheme
The State Management Scheme saw the UK government take over and run the brewing, distribution and sale of liquor in three regions of the UK from 1916 until 1973....
; nationalisation of pubs and brewing in the vicinity. Production of munitions started in April 1916 and by then a large proportion of its workers were women, in 1917: 11,576 women and 5,066 men.
In 1917, when production reached 800 ton
Ton
The ton is a unit of measure. It has a long history and has acquired a number of meanings and uses over the years. It is used principally as a unit of weight, and as a unit of volume. It can also be used as a measure of energy, for truck classification, or as a colloquial term.It is derived from...
s per week, King George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
and Queen Mary
Mary of Teck
Mary of Teck was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V....
made an Official Visit to the factory.
The site
H.M. Factory, Gretna consisted of four production sites, two townships and an independent water supply system consisting of a reservoirWater reservoir
A reservoir , artificial lake or dam is used to store water.Reservoirs may be created in river valleys by the construction of a dam or may be built by excavation in the ground or by conventional construction techniques such as brickwork or cast concrete.The term reservoir may also be used to...
and filters, and several water pumping stations.
- Site 1, at Smalmstown , was to the north of Longtown;
- Site 2, at Mossband , was bounded on the west by the Caledonian RailwayCaledonian RailwayThe Caledonian Railway was a major Scottish railway company. It was formed in the early 19th century and it was absorbed almost a century later into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, in the 1923 railway grouping, by means of the Railways Act 1921...
(now the West Coast Main LineWest Coast Main LineThe West Coast Main Line is the busiest mixed-traffic railway route in Britain, being the country's most important rail backbone in terms of population served. Fast, long-distance inter-city passenger services are provided between London, the West Midlands, the North West, North Wales and the...
), and the River EskRiver Esk, Dumfries and GallowayThe River Esk is a river in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, that flows into the Solway Firth. It also flows for a small way through the English county of Cumbria before entering the Solway....
on the south and the east. - Sites 3 and 4 were bounded on the south by the Solway Firth and the River SarkRiver SarkDisambiguation: for other meanings, please see Sark The River Sark or Sark Water is a river best known for forming part of the western border between Scotland and England...
; and on the north by the B721 Gretna to Dornock road, the townships and the Glasgow and South Western RailwayGlasgow and South Western RailwayThe Glasgow and South Western Railway , one of the pre-grouping railway companies, served a triangular area of south-west Scotland, between Glasgow, Stranraer and Carlisle...
.
The western area – Site 3 – was adjacent to Eastriggs township and Site 4, to its east, was adjacent to Gretna township.
Water was taken from the River Esk, north of Longtown through a 42 inches (106.7 cm) diameter pipe to the pump house. From there it was pumped through a 33 inches (83.8 cm) main to the reservoir and treatment works.
Production
At its peak, the factory produced 800 tonTon
The ton is a unit of measure. It has a long history and has acquired a number of meanings and uses over the years. It is used principally as a unit of weight, and as a unit of volume. It can also be used as a measure of energy, for truck classification, or as a colloquial term.It is derived from...
s (812 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
) of Cordite RDB (colloquially known as Devil's Porridge) weekly, more than all the other plants in Britain combined. It had its own narrow gauge
British military narrow gauge railways
These are narrow gauge railways at military establishments and former UK Government-owned explosives sites. These locations were often subject to the Official Secrets Act and other government restrictions, so many of them are less well documented....
(2 ft or 610 mm) railway network with 125 miles (201.2 km) of track, and 34 railway engines, its own coal-fired power station to provide electricity for the factory and townships, a water treatment plant handling ten million gallons a day, a telephone exchange (which handled 2.5 million calls in 1918), as well as bakeries, a laundry and a police force. The laundry could clean 6,000 items daily and the bakeries made 14,000 meals a day.
Closure
It closed at the end of World War I and the plant was demolished. The site was retained until the 1920s when much of it was sold off in some 700 lots. This left the Royal Gunpowder Factory, Waltham AbbeyWaltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills
The Royal Gunpowder Mills, Waltham Abbey, an Anchor Point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage, , set in of parkland and containing 21 buildings of major historical importance, mixes history, science, and attractive surroundings...
as the sole government-owned cordite factory until the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
expansion programme. The two townships of Eastriggs and Gretna and the bakeries were also sold off.
World War II and beyond
Three areas were retained throughout the remainder of the 20th century, and were used by the Ministry of DefenceMinistry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....
for ammunition storage.
- Some 2500 acres (10.1 km²) of Site 2, at Mossband, was used in the 1930s to store ammunition. It become a Central Ammunition Depot, CAD Longtown. Later on it was downgraded to a Base Ammunition Depot, BAD Longtown.
- Site 1, at Smalmstown, became a sub-depot of CAD Longtown..
of Site 3, to the southeast of Eastriggs, was used in the 1930s by the Ministry of Supply
Ministry of Supply
The Ministry of Supply was a department of the UK Government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. There was, however, a separate ministry responsible for aircraft production and the Admiralty retained...
for ammunition storage. It was known as CAD Eastriggs; in the 1960s it became a sub-depot of CAD Longtown. Much of the internal transport of ammunition within CAD Eastriggs was carried out using a narrow gauge railway system. Two of the petrol locomotives from the site were used on the Duchal Moor grouse railway
Duchal Moor Railway
The old Duchal Moor Railway grouse railway lies in the Duchal Moor and Muirshiel Hills within the Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park, 3 miles west southwest of Kilmacolm in Scotland.-History and infrastructure:...
near Kilmacolm
Kilmacolm
Kilmacolm is a village and civil parish in the Inverclyde council area and the historic county of Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It lies on the northern slope of the Gryffe Valley south-east of Greenock and around west of the city of Glasgow...
in Renfrewshire. CAD Eastriggs was also connected to the national railway network, near Eastriggs, via a link to the Glasgow and South Western Railway
Glasgow and South Western Railway
The Glasgow and South Western Railway , one of the pre-grouping railway companies, served a triangular area of south-west Scotland, between Glasgow, Stranraer and Carlisle...
.
- Site 4 appears to have been sold off and returned to agricultural uses.
An on-site exhibition, The Devil's Porridge is on display in Eastriggs. It takes its name from this 1917 description by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
:
See also
- CorditeCorditeCordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom from 1889 to replace gunpowder as a military propellant. Like gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance...
- Female roles in the World WarsFemale roles in the World WarsThere is little doubt that levi richardson is the man. he loves all the women of the world. even liz women's work in the two World Wars of the twentieth century was an important factor in the outcome of both wars...
- Shell Crisis of 1915Shell Crisis of 1915The Shell Crisis of 1915 was a shortage of artillery shells on the front lines of World War I, which largely contributed to weakening public appreciation of government of the United Kingdom because it was widely perceived that the production of artillery shells for use by the British Army was...
- British industrial narrow gauge railways
External links
- Website of the on-site exhibition
- Devil's Porridge: How world's largest factory helped win The Great War from The ScotsmanThe ScotsmanThe Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....