HM Factory, Gretna

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 km) from Mossband near Longtown, in the east, to Dornock / Eastriggs in the west.[1]

Construction work started in November 1915 under the general supervision of S P Pearson & Sons.[2] As part of the construction work, it was necessary to build two wooden townships to house the workers, including much of the township of Gretna and the village of Eastriggs.[1] 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.[3]

In 1917, when production reached 800 tons per week, King George V and Queen Mary made an Official Visit to the factory.[1]

Contents

The site

H.M. Factory, Gretna consisted of four production sites, two townships and an independent water supply system consisting of a reservoir and filters, and several water pumping stations.[4]

Site 1, at Smalmstown grid reference NY366690, was to the north of Longtown;
Site 2, at Mossband NY345655, was bounded on the west by the Caledonian Railway (now the West Coast Main Line), and the River Esk on the south and the east.[4]
Sites 3 and 4 were bounded on the south by the Solway Firth and the River Sark; and on the north by the B721 Gretna to Dornock road, the townships and the Glasgow and South Western Railway.[4]

The western area – Site 3 – was adjacent to Eastriggs township and Site 4, to its east, was adjacent to Gretna township.[4]

Water was taken from the River Esk, north of Longtown through a 42 inches (110 cm) diameter pipe to the pump house.[4] From there it was pumped through a 33 inches (84 cm) main to the reservoir and treatment works.[4]

Production

At its peak, the factory produced 800 tons (812 tonne) of Cordite RDB (colloquially known as Devil's Porridge) weekly, more than all the other plants in Britain combined.[1] It had its own narrow gauge (2 ft or 610 mm) railway network with 125 miles (201 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.[5] This left the Royal Gunpowder Factory, Waltham Abbey 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.[5]

World War II and beyond

Three areas were retained throughout the remainder of the 20th century, and were used by the Ministry of Defence for ammunition storage.

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:

“ The nitroglycerin on the one side and the gun-cotton on the other are kneaded into a sort of a devil's porridge ”

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Ministry of Munitions of War, Preface
  2. ^ John Alfred Spender (1977). Weetman Pearson, First Viscount Cowdray, 1856-1927. pp. 222. ISBN 0405098014. "The Pearson firm took up the work of construction managers in October" 
  3. ^ Rayner-Canham
  4. ^ a b c d e f Ministry of Munitions of War, Chapter 2: Water Supply
  5. ^ a b c d e f Longtown Military Railway

References

External links