A second visit to see more of this huge site. First to the very overgrown Gunpowder Section, and in a concrete incorporating mill in the woods I found three edge mills:
Explosives
ICI Nobel Explosives
The Ardeer peninsula in Ayrshire is basically a gigantic sand dune – it was chosen by Alfred Nobel in 1871 as the site for his British Dynamite Factory because of it’s remote location and lots of sand to make protective berms and blast walls. It soon grew into the world’s largest explosives factory, making explosives for mining and quarrying, and expanding into other explosives and propellants for both civilian and military uses.
Nobel Explosives became part of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) in 1926, but production shifted away and the Ardeer plant diversified into other non-explosive products, and unfortunately these didn’t do very well – much of the site is now derelict.
I’ve visited the southern shore-facing part of Ardeer before, but this visit was to investigate the northern section. First up was an interesting building on the satellite views which I knew from other sites was probably a drum mill for milling explosive powders – after poking about in the dense woodland, I found it:
Royal Ordnance Factory Bishopton
The Royal Ordnance Factories were built during the rearmament phase of the 1930’s, just in time for WWII – Bishopton was by far the largest, employing over 20,000 workers at it’s peak in three almost-self-contained factories within one perimeter fence. Factory III closed down almost immediately after the war, but factories I and II continued production of cordite, picrite (an anti-flashing and stabilising agent), RDX, white phosphorus, ball powder (gunpowder) and various other explosives and propellants up until the year 2000.
I spent three days exploring ROF Bishopton, taking hundreds of pictures – even the edited highlights run to 270 pictures, so this is just a brief summary of this absolutely massive (2.5 x 1.5 miles) site. I’ll do it in order of my explorations.
Bishopton had over 20 miles of standard-gauge rail lines – these were used with the ROF’s own fleet of diesel locos to move raw materials and finished propellant. This is one engine shed for the diesel engines:
