Royal Gunpowder Mills
It had been a good few years since I'd last attempted this site. In around Summer of 2017, having walked all the way from Cuffley for some daft reason, we quickly called off the visit for a reason I also can't quite remember.
Fast forward until a few weeks prior, on the travel home from another misadventure, I was having a quick flick through places with @Wastelandr and this was bought up as a mention. A few days later we agreed to give the mills a quick look after work to see if any progress could be made on the site after quite a few years of silence. Having arrived and downloaded yet another parking app we began to work our way past the fences and dense vegetation surrounding the site.
It had been a good few years since I'd last attempted this site. In around Summer of 2017, having walked all the way from Cuffley for some daft reason, we quickly called off the visit for a reason I also can't quite remember.
Fast forward until a few weeks prior, on the travel home from another misadventure, I was having a quick flick through places with @Wastelandr and this was bought up as a mention. A few days later we agreed to give the mills a quick look after work to see if any progress could be made on the site after quite a few years of silence. Having arrived and downloaded yet another parking app we began to work our way past the fences and dense vegetation surrounding the site.
Background
The Royal Gunpower Mills refers to three key munitions manufacturing facilities dating back to 1794, Circa 1759 and, 1665. The former date refers to that of the mill in the Lea Valley town of Waltham Abbey, which would become home to one of the earliest examples of a factory system in the Victorian revolution.
The gunpowder mill was first sited in Waltham abbey during the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665 where a shortage of gunpowder production quickly became a concern. Production of gunpowder would begin in the easily adaptable Oyle Mill situated along the man-made Milhead Stream, under the ownership of Ralph Hudson before being sold off to William Walton, where the mills would quickly expand along the stream to increase production in the years during and beyond the war.
By the end of the 18th century there was a growing concern of supply and security for the British industrial and military gunpowder supplies, this lead to a bid for the Waltham Abbey mills to be taken under the crown's ownership which took place in 1787. The take over of the mills allowed the production processes to rapidly diverge from the now antiquated methods for a more modern and developmental set of practices.
The purchase by the crown proved successful during the later years, as the improvements to the mills facilities and standards allowed for a high supply and quantity during the battles leading up to Waterloo in 1815. Following the battle of Waterloo, despite the slow down in production, the gunpowder mills continued to expand and develop the facilities before being thrown back into full service during the conflicts leading up to the Boer War from 1854.
From this reactivation of production during the later 19th century, the facilities were further improved to an extent where the gunpowder was soon being used for more than propellants in ammunition and the mills were then providing product for use in civil engineering and mining applications. Despite this new flow of production, it was predicted that the mills would soon become quiet as the need for war-time munitions had again dwindled.
Then the world war happened.
This again saw the need to employ a greater workforce, as further 3,000 persons joined the mills to bolster the production requirements during the opening years of the 1900's.
Post world war, the mills again fell into a state of anxiety regarding their use in production. Compounded by the concern that the site would be easily reachable from the European mainland, production would be gradually moved towards the west as Waltham Abbey would become a base for munition and propellant development with "RDX" being at the core of their interests. The movement of manufacturing away from the site would be temporarily halted as the world war then happened again.
From the opening months of the conflict to around 1941 the site produced explosives, until a full movement of the manufacturing facilities was completed. From this point production was fully wound down until the Royal Gunpowder Mills were fully closed, just before the end of the major conflicts, in July 1945.
Post Royal Gunpowder Mills
Despite the closure of the site and the lowered demand for munitions, the Waltham Abbey mills would be reactivated in 1945 under the Explosives Research and Development Establishment and later under the name of the Propellants, Explosives and Rocket Motor Establishment.
As the names would suggest, the site would be used to manufacture and research propellants and explosives for military use in forthcoming aircraft equipment and munitions.
The two halves of the site, North and South, were split by 1984 following the handover of the south site to the Royal Ordnance from the PERME. The northern site would continue on until 1991 where the site was vacated for improved facilities.
Since closure the mills have remained dormant and have passed onto a preservation group who inherited the buildings and archive documents for later display and preservation. Despite preservation efforts, a lot of the site is best considered as derelict without any heavy amounts of vandalism.
The Visit
We started our visit at the northern-most end of the site in a building marked as the "Grand Magazine" on older maps.
This building is completely isolated from the rest of the site and presumably has been disused for far longer than the rest of the establishment.
A large amount of the site looks a lot like this. Numerous bunkers hidden beyond the nettles and these, now completely rotten, bridges jumping back and fourth over the streams.
One of the many historical structures, this dating back to 1885.
Building number 22A. Not quite sure what this is, supposedly a store?
Building number S34. A very bunker-like building. From what I can understand this/was a control room and laboratory at some point.
We headed over the bridge onto a small portion of the site which pokes out from the main boundary.
A lot of the buildings here were ancillary structures and had mostly collapsed, our primary interest was building No.55 which is marked as a processing building.
We moved on through the woodland, arriving at an older bunker-style building.
This is marked as S90 which is referred to as a "firing point". Presumably, this was for test detonations with the pitted metal supporting our theory.
Passing by the old Press House.
Passing by this mill/pump-type strucutre.
We eventually pushed straight towards the front of the site. Were now more interested by the laboratory buildings.
This laboratory was formerly part of the DMXRD Materials Group, whatever that means, before being later marked as "laboratory"
By this point the evening was pushing on and, with a lengthy walk back to our cars ahead, we decided the depart.
Overall, this was a visit well worth conducting and puts to rest the curiosity of what the derelict portions of the site look like after around ten years since the last report.
Anyway, that'll be all.
KP_
KP_
