ROF Nottingham

In the late 1930s, war was seen as a possibility, if not likely, and a sizeable rearmament programme began, probably also activated by the concern that a large proportion of the arsenal was becoming obsolete.

The payroll level had grown to 2,272 people at the end of March 1938, and 3,796 a year later, shortly after the aforementioned 'Machinery' article had described the factory as 'working to capacity'.

[citation needed] Until the remodelling of the Meadows area around 1975, ROF Nottingham was much less conspicuous than it became (as least from ground level), being situated at the end of a series of Coronation Street type roads full of terraced houses.

It was decided therefore, as a camouflage measure, to paint a series of stripes running east–west across the North Shop roof, in tune with the roads, so that the factory resembled a continuation of the houses when viewed from the air.

As would be expected, the period immediately after the war (1946–50) saw little or no armament production and caused the factory to diversify widely, into initially unlikely fields.

The Nottingham Journal of Wednesday 6 June 1951 described Nottingham as the 'second largest factory after Woolwich Deep hole boring was claimed to be ten times faster than in World War II (the gun in question being the 20 pdr for early Centurions) and the major non-gun activity was the rework of Comet tanks.

The Bar Mine Layer, the Light Mobile Digger (LMD) trench digging machine, and the manufacture and assembly of the FV180 Combat Engineer Tractor were made from 1978 to 1983, although ROF Leeds was also heavily involved in production of this vehicle.

Large guns produced included the Royal Ordnance L7 105 mm tank ordnance, which was for a long time one of the most important products, and the 165 mm demolition gun that fired a very large HESH projectile and was fitted to the FV4003 Centurion Mk 5 AVRE (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers).

The sale of ROF Leeds to Vickers plc and closure of the Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF), Enfield,[when?]