Down in South Shropshire is a collection of mostly identical buildings, laid out over a grid-like pattern over a pretty large area. Some of the buildings are part of an industrial estate, while others are used by the farmers. A large number of them just sit there derelict, but they're clearly military in design, if no longer in purpose. I was quite surprised to find out that it was a naval depot, given that we're situated about seventy miles from the sea. But then, I went to the Nazi naval high command base a couple of years back, and that was nowhere near the sea either. I guess in war, it's in the interests of strategy to put things where the enemy won't expect them.
Unlike the Nazi naval base, which was largely underground, todays adventure comes with a good dose of Vitamin D, because it was largely spent on ground level, walking between the numerous buildings. There are rumours of underground facilities here though. In fact there are rumours of actual nukes stored underground here, but these seem to have been the invention of the Daily Star, the newspaper so bad it makes The Sun look intellectual.
Actually, nevermind that last bit. Nothing could possibly make the Sun look intellectual, save for burning every other form of literature in the world so that The Sun is the only form of written communication, and then giving the entire human race a lobotomy to reduce their standards, but you get the idea.
The thing is, there doesn't need to be any rumours about this place. The facts are interesting enough.
It was primarily chosen to be a depot because
the location was isolated, but serviced by a small railway Here we have what is obviously the old trackbed, leading off into the Shropshire countryside. It was from this direction that the trains would roll up, full of explosives and ammunition.
The railway itself came into being in 1908, running a few passenger trains but primarily freight for quarry work and other local industrial shit. This was all hit rather catastrophically by the recession of the 1930s, which saw widescale unemployment. The quarry itself closed in 1936, and the train line closed to passengers in 1938. A few freight trains still served concrete and tar plants, but their days were numbered too. The admirality was attracted to the remote, but mostly dead railway, because here they could utilise it without disrupting existing services.
Trains to the depot were fitted with spark arresters, to protect their delicate cargo from stray sparks. In the interests of secrecy, the spark arresters were justified
as a preventative measure for forest fires, but pretty much nobody was fooled by this,
given that the trains were crossing mostly empty countryside. In fact,
the admirality actually arranged for trees to be planted along the
railway line to help protect the trains from observation.
The urgency of stockpiling explosives was such that rather that have the trains return to Kidderminster for refilling their coal, as they had done in the past, they were now stabled closer to this depot where there was a coal supply that the train crews refilled by hand. There were also coaches parked there which acted as accomodation for soldiers guarding the trains. Additional carriages full of security soldiers were placed all along the line.
As the trains approached the depot, they'd stop at the perimeter fence and toot their whistle. The gates would open, and security would confiscate any cigarettes or matches held by the train crews before letting them in. After a while, even the steam trains were considered high risk despite having spark arresters in place, and soon the steam trains were only going as far as the perimeter where the loads were then swapped onto diesel trains that would travel the rest of the way.
I actually went here twice, and on the second visit it was considerably
less overgrown. Whereas before all the buildings were hidden in
woodland, now they seemed largely scattered over a barren wasteland, all looking pretty creepy, but all mostly empty. Nevertheless the widespread deforestation indicated that something would be done with the site soon.
This lone office room sits so close to the track bed, it surely must be an old security post.
Prior to being a naval depot, the land was mostly owned by Gustavus Hamilton-Russel, best known by the peerage of Viscount Boyne. The Earl of Powis wrote to Boyne in 1940, asking if he wouldn't mind handing over some of his land to help with the war effort. The land in question was of secondary importance, mainly grassland and overall a small portion of Boynes estate. Nevertheless, Boyne said no. And then in typical government fashion, they took it anyway with a compulsory purchase order, promising to hand it back once they were done with it.
A company called Bryant & Son had the contract to construct the depot, but there was a lot of fuss and dispute over the costs, mainly due to the poor communication with the admirality. It cost way more to build than the admirality wanted to pay, and this dispute dragged on for years.
By all accounts it was a bit of a shambles at the start, with many saying that they could do much more work with half the number of employees if it was properly organised. Lady Boyne, understandably critical and standing by her husband, described the men as "sweeping up imaginary dust" although she later apologised.
Nevertheless, the admirality got their depot. And in the interests of secrecy, it vanished on maps altogether. None of the roads were marked at all. It became a blind spot.
Of course, one could argue that having a blind spot on a map is pretty conspicuous, and the presence of the depot didn't escape the Nazis notice. Lord Haw-Haw, the right-wing American who fled to Germany and became a Nazi propaganda broadcaster, actually mentioned this depot on his show.
But despite having the Nazis attention, the depot wasn't attacked, although there was a decoy site nearby, and a couple of German planes did crash into the hillside, and a farm was bombed. Were they looking for this site? Possibly.
Now it's impossible to know for sure what each of the smaller buildings were actually used for, but this one resembles an air raid shelter, albeit a wider-than-average one. It probably housed a vehicle at some point. It appears to be next to an office building.
There's some vintage graffiti here, dated 1982. This place was already empty by then, so really this is evidence of pre-internet urbex.
Over the course of the war, thousands of tons of shells and explosives were brought by train to be assembled, and stored. There was roughly 500 people working here, a third of which were women, although many would be made redundant once the war ended and their jobs could be taken by the returned soldiers.
A lot of the female employees were referred to as "Dilly Girls" because
they drove around on tiny little dilly tractors, transferring
explosives from the trains to the storage facilities. Many of the male employees were former quarry workers who had faced unemployment with their closure. The weekly wage here was £10, but according to an online inflation calculator thats worth roughly £595 today, so for a weekly wage that's pretty sweet. It paid more than the local farms did, for less work, so a lot of people left their agricultural jobs to work here. As far as providing work goes, the depot was a blessing. That didn't stop the workers giving it the unflattering nickname, "The Dump," but they had all signed the official secrets act, so maybe that had something to do with it.
The workers arrived via bus, clocked in by stamping a card with the time, and then had five minutes to change into their uniforms. There were a lot of strict rules, all in the interests of not getting accidentally blown up. It was forbidden to smoke on the depot, and workers had to hand over their contraband at the door, and still let themselves get searched by security afterwards. Newspapers weren't allowed, because they were flammable. Even sweets were forbidden because the acedic acid in them was potentially corrosive. Naturally because humans are humans, there were rule breakers, and stories do exist of people who were dismissed on the spot for smuggling cigarettes into the workplace.
When I was researching the place, I came across scans of an employee handbook from 1944 that went over all of the rules in alarmingly dull brain-destroying detail, often outlining things that should be common sense, like not being under the influence of alcohol when handling explosives. That sort of thing. Some rules seemed a little extreme, such as telling the employees to sew up the pockets on their clothes unless they absolutely needed those pockets. But I guess this just goes to reflect the urgency of the situation.
Spitting was also forbidden, but I'm not sure why it had to be stated. Anyone who can't walk around their workplace without spitting would be better suited living in the zoo than in full time employment around humans. Interestingly, spectacles weren't allowed unless their arms looped around the ears, for "security reasons" although what security reason, I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with reducing the risk of glasses falling off peoples faces and smashing.
But the vast majority of the rules seemed to be around cleaning, checking surfaces, tools
and stuff, clothing, cross contamination such as cleaning a lab inbetween working on different kinds of bombs, keeping fingernails short and washing ones hands thoroughly after working with cordite. That sort of thing. Direct
sunlight wasn't allowed to fall on any explosives. Stacks of
warheads were not allowed to exceed eleven feet, and the explosives were
to be sorted in such a way that they could be removed easily if it was
suspected that they would detonate, so as not to set off all the other explosives. It's all really common sense when you think about it.
I'm not sure what this building was, but the large door next to the road would suggest that it housed a vehicle. The box under the window is a galvanised steel electrical junction box. The cables coming from the bottom of it have all been cut.
Outside one of the bomb stores was a load of toys, casually dumped here. Here's the car from Toy Story, likely produced in 1995 when the movie came out.
Here's Spider-Man sitting in his spider car. I tried looking in to when this toy came out, and found out that Spider-Man has actually had a shocking number of cars over the years. It amazes me, to be honest. Isn't one of the perks of his super powers that he doesn't have to get stuck in traffic? Why would he have a car?
Eventually I found this exact "super spider car RC" on Amazon, and found out that it was part of the toyline for Spider-Man 2, which came out in 2004.
So this is what the bomb store buildings looked like, although they didnt have abandoned caravans next to them back in the 1940s. The dilly girls would drive their tractors along these roads and under the protruding porch section of the buildings, to unload the bombs under shelter.
The workers had breakfast on site, and then at 11am there was a sandwich and tea round, courtesy of a worker named Peggy, who quite possibly is a distant relation of my friend Tamsin, who has been on this blog before, although this relation is not confirmed. Peggy began working here in 1948, staying until 1963. Presumably she had a predecessor prior to 1948.
The canteen was located in a place nicknamed the "dirty area" although
according to the employee handbook, "dirty" just means the absence of clean
conditions, but not the presence of dirt. The "Clean areas" were simply
maintained to have an absence of any means of
ignition, including stuff that could potentially cause sparks, such as
iron and steel. So "dirty" basically meant it was probably a hazard to keep bombs there, but not neccessarily unsafe for food consumption.
The canteen was also used by the local school too, and eventually became the village hall. At that point, the school had to have their own kitchen built.
There are loads of these adorable brick structures scattered around. They're all empty now.
This particular building has a sandwich van parked outside, which looks a little too clean for my liking. We didn't nose around this one too much, because it's clearly being used by someone.
There are fire points in the overhanging parts of all the bomb stores, but this one still lists the chap who was responsible for this specific post, G Parker.
As you can imagine from the absolute banning of all things flammable, the depot had very strict fire safety rules, and the policy was basically to be ready for one at any moment. Buckets of water were placed outside the buildings, presumably at these fire points, ready to be used
just in case. In the event of a thunderstorm, a bell would ring, the
store rooms
would be secured, the electricity turned off, and the staff evacuated to
the shifting room where they got changed, until the bell rang all
clear. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near the bombs in the event of a storm.
In a moment of editorial stupidity, I blanked out the rest of the number, opting to keep the area code, only to realise that there is no area code. It's a mobile number. Silly me.
One of my favourite parts of the depot was this adorable moss-covered air raid shelter, although it can't possibly be the only one around here.
There's a door at both ends, and with the overgrowth around it, it actually provided a means of getting past all of natures pointy bits.
I have a few firsthand accounts of the depot after the war, when things presumably relaxed a bit, and I find them to be entertainingly human, such as nicknaming Jim the clerical officer "Jungle Jim" due to his many frequent stories of
serving in Burma starting with the sentence "When I was in the
jungle..."
I like this sort of thing. It's one thing to read about a place and get
a bunch of dates about when it was constructed and when it closed, but
it's so much nicer to get to the actual meat. I want to be able to
imagine what it was like to actually be here.
New labs were constructed in the 1950s, and these had lifting gear to hoist stuff off the trains. Primarily these were underwater armaments like squids (a ship mounted anti-submarine weapon), depth charges and torpedo warheads.
There was a tunnel that the staff named The Redoubt where workers would use old First World War bayonets to scrape off any old paint or rust, before cleaning the bombs with white spirit, repainting them, and then sending them out of the tunnel for storage. This was an unpopular job, often used to punish naughty employees.
Another
unpopular job was the broken-seal room. All ammunition containers were
sealed prior to dispatch. When they got to the depot, they were checked to see
if the seals were intact. If they werent sealed properly, they were sent
to the broken seal room. If the ammo was small calibre, the
manufacturers details were recorded, before it was repacked and
resealed. Larger pieces were examined in chamber guages to make sure
there was nothing wrong with them.
Allegedly one day, an inspector called Percy accidentally trapped his cock in the chamber guage when he pushed too hard with his lower abdomen.
It sounds both tragic and hilarious. I'm certain I wouldn't know what to do if I witnessed this happening. The two lab girls, Freda and Mary, attempted to help him, but it was a confined space so it was awkward. In the end they succeeded in freeing him, and the other lab guy, John, filled out the accidental injury report, but the inspector refused to offer visible proof of injury.
So Lab Guy John is a pretty good source of firsthand stories on the place. He joined in 1951 through a "Boys in training" program. It was sort of
like an apprenticeship. The weekly wage was £2, four shillings and six
pence, which according to the inflation calculator (after converting the shillings
and six pence into the modern British currency) is about £80.
John got a wealth of experience in the various departments, where his account tells of great detail of how he learned how to do everything, and how his whistling on the job annoyed everyone. He tells of how one of his superiors, Reg, was sneaking off to the registry office to see an archivist called Ena, and how he used to cover up Reg's absences. Reg and Ena ended up moving to Canada to live happily ever after. It's pretty sweet.
Surrounding all of the bomb stores are these brick mounds, and these were essentually blast shields. They're on all sides of the store, including in front of it, across the road. The purpose, as you can probably guess, is to protect the rest of the site if the contents of the building were to explode.
This one is actually open, but the contents are now much less explosive. Still, we can get an idea for what this would have looked like. There would have been loads of shelves of bombs in here.
The current contents are much more grimy.
Check out this sofa!
Work aside, Johns tales of the depot cannot stress enough how dull it could be at times. Much of the job involved waiting for work to arrive via rail, waiting for paperwork to arrive, waiting for trains to remove the completed work, and just pouncing on various jobs when they became available. When asked how many people worked at the depot, John would jokingly reply "About half of them, but it's not their fault."
While many of the stricter rule-abiding workers were content to sit and wait and twiddle their thumbs in between tasks, a lot of the younger staff members got a bit silly, and entertained themselves with games, and sometimes pranks. They'd play football, although obviously there wasn't an actual football. They had to make do with whatever would make a suitable equivalent. They played Quoits, using the rubber rings that were used to seal bung holes in depth charges. They also played a naval gambling boardgame called Crown and Anchor. Due to the gambling involved, the game was frowned upon in some circles, and at various points in history has been outright illegal. As such they were extra careful to ensure that they were not caught by their superiors.
John tells of how one day while working in the broken-seal room, he got so bored of Mary and Fredas chattering that he playfully attempted to gag them with tape. Freda ducked, and the tape ended up over the top of her head, and ended up removing her entire left eyebrow. She was enraged, but decided not to report the incident when John managed to draw on a replacement that wouldn't draw too much attention once Freda had adjusted her hairline. I should point out, Freda and Johnn were friends, and this was really more of a banterous gagging than actual assault. Pretty important disclaimer there.
There was a constable who wanted to get into Freda's knickers, and eventually he did actually marry her. And because of this, he actually looked the other way through many of the groups silly antics, to the point of reporting that a window was broken by a bird hitting it, when it was quite clearly Johns football.
And of course, the workers got each other with no end of pranks. Workers would find their drinking mugs or lunchboxes nailed to tables, or find frogs in their coat pockets, and a popular one was to wait until two people were in neighbouring toilet cubicles and then tie the handles on the cubicle doors to each other so that as one opened, it pulled the other one shut, making leaving the cubicles into something of a tug of war. And from what I can tell, it was all usually taken really well, with pranks reciprocated by other pranks. And sometimes their antics weren't so much about smiting others, so much about getting better stuff. A popular game was to steal toilet paper from the police toilet, because theirs was better quality. Naturally none of this was allowed, so part of the fun was messing around without being noticed by their superiors.
There
was a brief era where everyone drank out of jam jars for a bit. This was
brought on by a stone throwing competition involving a worker called Paddy, who
accidentally threw a stone that smashed another workers mug.
Don, the now mugless worker, sought revenge and for the next few weeks, neither of
them had a drinking receptacle that lasted longer than a day. Every time one of them had a mug, the other would seek to smash it, and gradually they worked their way through the depots entire mug stock. When
the mugs were replaced by jam jars, the war continued, but it was found that having
shards of glass lying around from jammageddon was problematic so their colleagues forced them
to call it quits.
This bomb store looks like it's been converted for barn use, but upon entering I was quite amazed to find loads of vehicles.
Here we have an opel manta, which I'm told is quite the find. I wonder if it still works.
And here are a load of vintage buses. These couldn't possibly be the same vehicles that brought the employees to work all those years ago, could they? I would love it if they were, but realistically those ones were probably removed and these are someone elses collection.
They're still cool though!
I got onto one of the buses, but alas, the interior has been entirely removed.
Unfortunately for the depot, correspondence in 1962 said that there was no specific war task for the
site anymore, and due to its location it was now the least effective of all
naval depots. Its closure was on the horizon, but it would still hang on for a few more years as the workers cleared out all of the naval stock. By 1964, the stock was so low that police were no longer required on site, replaced by two watchmen, Dick Grace and Horace Harris (What an awesome name) who each received a medal for their 25 years of service. While the final closure of the site was proposed for 1968, they got it all done sooner than expected and ended up closing in 1965.
There's an actual boat under this cover, but the cover looked a little too new. Someone clearly cares about it, so I decided to leave it alone.
These caravans, on the other hand, are decaying quite nicely.They were totally unloved and also wide open. I had a bit of a mooch, but abandoned caravans creep me out a bit so I didn't stop long.
With all the naval stuff gone, and the site surplus to requirements, the time came to sell the land back to its original owners. And Gustavus Boyne was pretty eager, having been waiting for twenty years since the war ended. However, unknown to the folks at the MOD negotiating this deal, another department of the MOD just decided to give it to the Americans for a bit, without any communication on the subject.
It pissed off Boyne because he'd just been promised his land back and had it snatched away at the last moment.
The American situation was to do with NATO. In 1966 General de Gaulle took France out of it. It was suggested that he was concerned with the presence of Americans in France making them a potential target of the Soviets, but I'm not sure how true that is. Either way, the Americans were given short notice to clear out of France, and so they temporarily had to move into any UK bases that were considered surplus to requirements, including this one.
Needless to say, Boyne was miffed. He threatened legal action. He took his issue up in the house of lords. He absolutely raised hell. One angry correspondence said "There has been an invasion
by he ministry of defence with a large ammunition dump installed, and a
farmers field invaded and arbitrarily converted into a car park. The
Shropshire Lanes have been invaded by great fleets of ammunition
lorries. Private rights have been overridden, and there has been a total
disregard of what should have been done in the interests of local
farmers."
I love that use of the word "Invaded." It's so dramatic.
The MOD were apologetic, because there was an error in their own internal communication, with one party beginning arrangements with Boyne while the other made arrangements with the Americans. To their credit, they admitted this error, apologised publically on the TV and in person, making a house call. But legally, Boyne lost. Due to the Cold War and tensions escalating with the Russians, this was all considered to be in the national inererest. The Visiting Forces Act of 1952 specified that the government had to provide facilities for the US forces as if they were our own.
The media did what the media does, and stirred the pot to sell papers, drawing comparison between this drama and one at a place called Crichel Down. A brief summary of Crichel Down is that land was purchased by the military and instead of being given back to the former owner after the war, was sold to someone else instead, who eventually offered to sell it back to the original owner for a horrifically higher price than they'd gotten from the military when they purchased it. Unable to afford it, it became a national scandal and someone ended up resigning.
Those defending the MOD in this case pointed out that this was a completely different scenario and that the mainstream media was just being a shit-stirring little bitch. Boyne would still get his land back. The situation with the Americans was just adding an extra year to the timeline. One flippin' year. Calm the fuck down.
And so, 233 men of the 608th Ordnance Company moved in to the depot. They
brought with them some 22,000 tons of armaments. Once their stuff was
stored, the majority of them went off to Georgia, leaving only a few personel
behind. They stayed here for about fifteen months, and legal disputes
with angry landowners aside, they were generally well recieved by the
community. It
was during this time that the railway track was pulled up. The Americans then actually improved the roads around the depot, because
without the railway they needed to be able to access the depot
with their vehicles. The Americans opened their social clubs to the
villagers and organised shows and open days. They even bussed women up
from Wolverhampton for their parties. But they cleared out in 1968. The
depot closed for the last time, and Boyne got his land back.
There's a plastic christmas tree in a box here.
There are signs here that make mention of the Burwarton Show, a local agricultural attraction. I don't know much about it, but I don't think it's usually held here. Maybe it was at one point.
That should have been the end of the story really. The navy had gone. The Americans had gone. Boyne had what he wanted. The canteen became a village hall. The school had to build their own one. An industrial estate opened, utilising some of the buildings. Some of them were used for farming and some became derelict. The dust settled.
And then out of nowhere in 1981, the Daily Star reported that the Russians were planning on dropping two nukes on the depot. Surely that would wipe out or at least irradiate all of Shropshire, right? We'd have toes growing on our foreheads without having to be from Wem.
What's interesting is that the locals were more entertained than anything, criticising the intelligence of the Soviets, whose information was over a decade out of date. I gotta be honest, I'm leaning more on the opinion that the newspaper is telling porky-pies here. I mean let's be honest, supposing the Soviets did have a leak, and a mole was able to find out that they had a couple of nukes heading for rural England, would they really go to the Daily Star? That's like realising that you need food, and going to a sewage treatment plant. The only reason anyone buys the Daily Star (and the Sun for that matter) is because it has boobs on it. I mean sure, we all like boobs, but if you need to put boobs on a product to sell it, then your product is shit. (Products related to the sex industry excluded, obviously)
This particular building is sealed up a bit more than the others though. It sure intrigues me. I wonder what's in there.
This building is different. Given that it has larger doors, I wonder if it once housed vehicles. Given that it's locked, I wonder if it still does.
And then this one looks like an old style privy, but surely they had a better toilet block than this.
This building is unique too, in that it is the only bomb store to have metal bars over the windows, and a notice on the door saying that it is alarmed to the police.
It's worth pointing out the little hatch on the door though. These are little inspection windows. Back in the day, the workers superiors could keep an eye on them without having to actually enter the building. Such inspections were apparently random, and it made the workers in-between-work games a lot more riskier.
Naturally, because some of these storage facilities are obviously still in use, we decided not to intrude too much. As intriguing as this is, it's not really my thing. I just want to document what's here and talk about the history.
Here are some steps leading up to the old fire appliances, now on the other side of the fence.
These are where the fire hydrants would have been back in the day. There are a few of these remnants dotted around the place.
And then there;s this old Bedford! The interesting thing about this is that on my earlier visit, it was lying on its side, looking even more sorry for itself, being clawed back by nature.
Someone, for some reason, decided to roll it back upright when they cleared the area, but didn't actually take the van itself away. Whats up with that?
And also dotted around are these square pools of water. Rain water, probably. I'm not sure if these were old water tanks for fire safety or what, but what I do know is I wouldn't want to drink from it.
That's about it for the depot. To summarise, I guess it's fun for a mooch if you like old military stuff. There are a few old air raid shelters and other ruins about. From an urbex perspective, it should probably be left alone. Some of these buildings are obviously still being used, and to call the site "abandoned" is inaccurate, even if parts of it are rater dilapidated. Nevertheless, for its historical significance, this place is great. For a brief moment, the folks of Shropshire thought that the Russians were actually planning on nuking them. It would have been tragic if it was true. The people of Shropshire don't deserve to be nuked, no matter how annoying, gross or smelly they are. On the other hand, the Nazis knew about this place and that is kinda exciting, although if they had successfully bombed this place, it would have been disatrous. We'd have a few collossal craters here instead.
It's actually pretty fascinating.
My next couple of blogs will be on the other blog, and they'll be about an old scare attraction, and then an abandoned house. In the meantime, follow me on Instagram, my Twitter, Vero the Instagram clone with less humans but also less shitty algorithm, reddit, and also on the cesspit that is Faceboomer.
Thanks for reading!
If your seeing this mate whats the exact location?
ReplyDelete