Its facilities include two Integrated Weapon Complexes (IWCs), 24 processing rooms and 26 explosives stores.

[4] Fort Elson was built on the site in 1855, to defend Gosport and Portsmouth amid fears of a French invasion at the time.

[5] Three satellite munitions depots (Elson, Frater and Bedenham) were constructed as individual installations on the site from 1908 until the early 1920s.

Fort Elson and adjacent facilities were used for magazine storage from the early 1920s, with the structure still remaining on the site.

This investigation would later include the unrelated explosion of the RFA Bedenham, a ship docked in Gibraltar which exploded in early 1951.

The move established the Royal Naval Armament Depot Gosport as a merger of the three smaller facilities.