Purchase by the Crown
Concerns over security, quality and economy of supply were raised by the Deputy Comptroller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich, Major Sir William Congreve in the 1780’s who recommended that the Waltham Abbey Mills should be acquired by the Crown to guarantee secure supplies and to create what would now be called a centre of excellence for development of manufacturing processes and to establish standards in both quality and cost that private contractors could be judged by. October 1787 saw the purchase of the Mills from John Walton, by the Crown for £10,000, heralding the start of a 204 year ownership. Congreve’s immense drive and vision, coupled with careful management, quality control and scientific method saw manufacture move from what had been a black art to an advanced technology by the standard of that time.
The French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic War saw the Mills respond successfully in both volume and quality to the massive increases in demand which arose over the period between 1789 and 1815. In the years that followed Waterloo the Mills entered a lull in production and a decline in staff numbers. However this was tempered by a steady advance in machinery and process development.
The tranquility was not to last. The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 quickly followed by the Indian Mutiny and numerous colonial conflicts followed, finishing with the Boer War of 1899 – 1902.
Explosives Advances
This stimulated the thirst for further development. The Mills primary function was to provide gunpowder for military use, either as a propellant, or as a military explosive, advances made at the Mills had a strong influence on private production for civil use – construction, mining, quarrying, tunneling, railway building etc. which created massive demand for gunpowder in the 19th century.
In 1865 while Sir Frederick Abel was in charge, first, Guncotton was developed and patented at Waltham Abbey, then in 1889, the propellant Cordite.
The Great Wars – World War I & II
The onset of WWI in 1914 meant a huge rise in demand. The Mills reacted by increasingstaff numbers by roughly 3000 to around 6230. The majority of the 3000 new workers were female, drawn from the local population and creating something of a social phenomenon.
In 1918 when WWI came to an end there was again a period of peace before concerns about the future again surfaced. A decision to move production at Waltham Abbey gradually to the west of the country was made, due to it being safer from air attack from Europe. During the transfer however production continued and important development work progressed on TNT production and on the new explosive RDX. During WWII Waltham Abbey was to remain an important cordite production unit and wasthe sole production site of RDX for the first two years of the war. 1943 saw the completion of the transfer to the West Country, many of Waltham Abbey staff played a vital role in developing these new factories, training staff and overseeing production with the Mills finally closing.
The Mills were re-opened in 1945 as a research centre for military propellant and high explosives and became increasingly prominent in field of rocket propellants, solid and liquid and a range of specialised applications, e.g. ‘snifters’ for altering space vehicles direction when in flight, cartridges for firing aircraft Ejection Seats, engine and generator starter cartridges – these applications have been called ‘a measured strong shove’. The rocket activity later extended to the production of rocket motors.
As years went by and after various reorganisations of Governmental research, the Mils finally closed in 1991, and so bringing to a close 300 years of explosives production and research.