It lies within the city boundary of Bristol, in Avonmouth ward, but used to be beyond it, in historic Gloucestershire, on former marshland at the southern end of the Vale of Berkeley.

[citation needed] During World War I, the Ministry of Munitions built a filling factory for artillery shells on the site, which was farmland commandeered by the military for its closeness to Avonmouth docks and to the site of the National Spelter Company's chemical works (Spelter being zinc or a zinc alloy) in St Andrew's Road, Avonmouth, later the National Smelting Company.

In defiance of the Hague Convention on weapons, the German army used mustard gas (dichloroethyl sulphide) against Allied troops on the Eastern and Western Fronts in 1917, and the British minister of munitions, Winston Churchill, ordered supplies to be manufactured in Britain for use in retaliation.

[2] By November 1918, with unskilled female labour, Chittening had produced 85,424 mustard gas shells, but at a human cost of 1213 notified cases of associated illness, including at least two deaths which were later attributed to influenza.

The original internal railway system of the smelting works (separate from the filling factory) was operated by two-foot gauge four-wheel battery-driven locomotives built for the Ministry of Munitions by the forerunner of Brush Traction of Loughborough.

In 1951 a factory producing carbon black was built to the north-east of the estate (Philblack, later Sevalco), and operated until 2008 when its closure was announced.