Thorp Arch Trading Estate

The Royal Ordnance Factory was built to supply British forces with munitions during the Second World War.

The site was ideal: it had a railway running adjacent (the Harrogate to Church Fenton Line), open space and was not in a strategic bombing area.

The retail park is constructed in semi-underground bunkers, with grassy banks running up the sides of the buildings.

However, with a boom in the construction trade and many others in the post-war years, the site found many new industries requiring the space it could offer.

Bargain Street, (a now defunct West Yorkshire discount clothes and household good retailer) also had premises.