HMEF Queensbury

[Guest morgana]

I am trying to find out what happened to the munitions factories of WW1 after 1918. Records seem hard to find.

My particular interest at the moment is HMEF Queensferry near Chester.

Apparently the site was originally built by Willans & Robinson (date unknown) making high speed reciprocating steam engines (not railway locomotives) in early electrical generation. However, by 1914 this type od engines had been replaced by the turbine and it would appear that the factory had closd by 1914.

The site was then used as a camp for German PoWs (true?).

In 1915 the factory was selected in 1915 for producing explosives, initially guncotton and later TNT, starting production in December 1915. The factory closed in 1918.

Does anyone know where the fasctory was, and what the site has been used for in the last 90 years?

[William Shelford]

I am trying to find out what happened to the munitions factories of WW1 after 1918. Records seem hard to find.

My particular interest at the moment is HMEF Queensferry near Chester.

Apparently the site was originally built by Willans & Robinson (date unknown) making high speed reciprocating steam engines (not railway locomotives) in early electrical generation. However, by 1914 this type od engines had been replaced by the turbine and it would appear that the factory had closd by 1914.

The site was then used as a camp for German PoWs (true?).

In 1915 the factory was selected in 1915 for producing explosives, initially guncotton and later TNT, starting production in December 1915. The factory closed in 1918.

Does anyone know where the fasctory was, and what the site has been used for in the last 90 years?

Queensferry Explosives Factory in Flintshire is one of many locations listed in "Industrial Locomotives of North Wales", one of the series of books produced by the Industrial Railway Society which list all the locations in the UK which had private railways. These include military sites, factories, collieries, temporary construction jobs, preserved railways etc. As well as details of the locomotives used, a brief history of the location and its OS grid reference is given.

This book states that the Willans & Robinson boiler works (at OS Grid Ref SJ 328680), closed in 1908, but was still unsold in 10/1911. In 1915 the premise were taken by the Government, first as a POW depot, but then as the nucleus of an explosives factory, which soon occupied all the land between the Chester to Holyhead railway line and the River Dee, the site extending eastwards to Sandycroft Station. Construction of this factory by the contractors, Wilson Lovatt & Sons Ltd and Holland & Hannen and Cubitts Ltd, started in 1915. After the war the Government kept some of the site for a Stores Depot (CSD 473), a larger number of standard gauge "main line" locomotives returned from France being stored here c1919-1920. The Stores Depot was put up for sale in 1931. By 1939 much of the area was disused and it was again taken over by the Government. After World War 2 its use declined and by the mod 1950's only a small Stores Depot remained at the eastern end of the site.

[Guest morgana]

Thanks to William Shelford for his reply.

[Peter J Smith]

I am currently restoring one of the 1917-built Brush 2ft gauge battery electric locos - 16303 - that were delivered to here. 

 

If anyone has any images of the site in use, or any information on the kind of uniform/clothing worn by male workers, then please advise! Or any pointers as to further research. I've found the Imperial War Museum online search a bit heavy to get through, and there seems to be an oft displayed image of a similar locomotive in use at Gretna which I just can't find on there.

 

This is my first posting on this forum so apologies if I haven't followed protocols.

 

edit: Could the mods adjust the title from Queensbury to Queensferry?

Edited 19 February , 2018 by Peter J Smith
Hopefully clarify location.