It’s been, ooh, 15 minutes since I last did a report on this place 🙂 Sadly, it now looks as if this place doesn’t have much longer…
Firstly the WWII-era Cordite press houses – this part is very torn up, looks like for buried electrical cable and scrap, very smashed up but still some lovely details left, like this Tangye press:
Some more things from the Cordite houses:
Now the destruction – the Nitroglycerine hills have been attacked with a JCB, digging into the berms and demolishing the buildings inside. The unique gunpowder section has had some tracks bulldozed into it, and the edge-runner mills have been smashed up and removed:
Those edge-runner mills were unique. Even the museum at Waltham Abbey only has a replica – there were three in very good condition here, there’s now one left and it’s probably going soon.
From the labs, some old colour films:
Climbing on some blast walls:
Gunpowder press GP2:
Yet more old pictures:
A bunch of newer advertising boards:
Drum test area:
Low pressure chamber – for testing explosives at different atmospheric pressures:
This was the back path to the labs – last week it was a very narrow track overgrown with gorse. They’re working quickly…
The cold test building – explosives were stored at low temperatures to test how they would behave in cold climates:
All images:
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Is this the stevenson site near Irvine?
I was exploring a fuel site near Prestwick in the spring and noticed some interesting ground works up the coast and was planning to explore – am i now too late!
That’s the place. It’s past it’s best, but there’s still a lot to see there.