The

Royal Ordnance Factory Royal Ordnance Factories (ROFs) was the collective name of the UK government's munitions factories during and after the Second World War. Until privatisation, in 1987, they were the responsibility of the Ministry of Supply, and later the Ministr ...

(ROF) Ranskill was a United Kingdom

Ministry of Supply The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for air ...

, World War II,

Explosive ROF An Explosive ROF was a UK Government-owned Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF), which specialised in manufacturing explosives during and after World War II. Note: In World War I, the name used in the UK for Government-owned explosives factories was Nati ...

. It was built to manufacture

cordite Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom since 1889 to replace black powder as a military propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burn ...

and the site was located adjacent to what is now known as the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain runni ...

railway at

Ranskill Ranskill is a village and civil parish in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England, with its nearest town being Retford approximately 5 miles (8 kilometres) south. The Ranskill parish according to the 2001 census has 2,226 residents, ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

, just north of the town of

Retford Retford (), also known as East Retford, is a market town in the Bassetlaw District in Nottinghamshire, England, and one of the oldest English market towns having been granted its first charter in 1105. It lies on the River Idle and the Chesterfie ...

. Cordite production ceased in 1945, but the site was retained by the ministry on "care and maintenance" basis for another 30 years. Few of the war-time buildings survive and site has been used as a

waste disposal Waste management or waste disposal includes the processes and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitorin ...

site for years.

Construction and production

Approval for the construction of ROF Ranskill was given was granted in 1940; and it was built with the Ministry of Works acting as Agents. It was designed, as an almost self-contained, explosive factory producing

Cordite Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom since 1889 to replace black powder as a military propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burn ...

, with its own

acids In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a ...

plant. It was connected to the national railway network, with its own private sidings. It was the last Cordite-producing Royal Ordnance Factory to be built in the UK in World War II and was the smallest of the three Cordite ROFs, covering about . The other two being

ROF Bishopton The Royal Ordnance Factory was a WW2 Ministry of Supply Explosive Factory. It is sited adjacent to the village of Bishopton in Renfrewshire, Scotland. The factory was built to manufacture the propellant cordite for the British Army and the Roy ...

and

ROF Wrexham Wrexham Industrial Estate (Welsh: ) is a well defined industrial area in Wrexham. It is sited on the eastern outskirts of the city and 2.5 miles from the centre of Wrexham. Originally the site of a World War II munitions factory, the estate lat ...

. Cordite production at Ranskill commenced in March 1942; and the site took 18 months to reach maximum production. It employed, at maximum production, some 4,000 people.

Care and maintenance

Production of cordite ceased in 1945, at the end of World War II, but the site retained by the ROF organisation until 1975 on a "care and maintenance" basis, firstly under the administration of ROF Bishopton and in the latter years by

ROF Bridgwater Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) Bridgwater was a factory between the villages of Puriton and Woolavington in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, UK that produced high explosives for munitions. It was slightly above sea level, between the 5 and 10 ...

. Cocroft notes that an

RDX RDX (abbreviation of "Research Department eXplosive") or hexogen, among other names, is an organic compound with the formula (O2N2CH2)3. It is a white solid without smell or taste, widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified as a ...

plant was installed there sometime in the 1950s. The production plant at ROF Ranskill was broken up from 1975 with useful spares for (presumably) the RDX plant being sent to ROF Bridgwater before the site was handed over to what was to later to become the

Defence Estates Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is an operating arm of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence (MoD) in the United Kingdom, which is responsible for the built and rural estate. Its Chief Executive is Graham Dalton. ...

for disposal. The site has been "landscaped" with very few buildings surviving; and has been used as a

site for some time.

References

Sources

* * {{coord, 53.381, -1.000, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Cordite

Buildings and structures in Nottinghamshire History of Nottinghamshire