HM Factory, Gretna

Factory, Gretna stretched 9 miles (14 km) from Mossband near Longtown in the east, to Dornock / Eastriggs in the west straddling the Scottish-English border.

[4] Water was taken from the River Esk, north of Longtown, through a 42 inches (110 cm) diameter pipe to a pump house.

[3] Construction work on HM Factory, Gretna started in November 1915 under the general supervision of S P Pearson & Sons.

[5] Up to 10,000 Irish navvies worked on the site as well as concurrently building the two wooden townships to house the workers at Gretna and Eastriggs.

[2] To prevent problems with the influx of construction and munition workers, authorities implemented the State Management Scheme which curtailed alcohol sales through the nationalisation of pubs and breweries in the vicinity.

[8] At its peak, the factories produced 1,400 tonnes of Cordite RDB per week, more than all the other munitions plants in Britain combined.

He later wrote "The nitroglycerin on the one side and the gun-cotton on the other are kneaded into a sort of a devil's porridge; which is the next stage of manufacture...those smiling khaki-clad girls who are swirling the stuff round in their hands would be blown to atoms in an instant if certain small changes occurred".

The first 25% redundancies were announced in December 1918,[9] and the final closure notice was issued in August 1919, by which time the workforce had been reduced to 3000 from 4000.

[10][11] In September 1919 the special Andrew Barclay 'fireless' locos used to shunt the explosives were sold off (both 2 foot gauge and standard-gauge) along with 40 standard gauge, covered, bogie 'paste' wagons (made by Magor Car Co. of New York, and Pickering Bros of Wishaw), and a further 86 open 4-wheel contractors wagons.

[13] On its closure, Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills near London became the sole government-owned cordite factory until an expansion programme started at the outbreak of World War II.