The Royal Gunpowder Factories can trace their history back to 1560 when the first Royal Gunpowder Factory was established at Waltham Abbey in Essex. This site has the longest known association with the manufacture of explosives of any site in Great Britain. By 1672, the site contained gunpowder mills and under successive generations of the Walton family, it developed into the largest and most complete works in Britain by 1735.
In the 1780’s there was a concern over security, quality and economy of supply of gunpowder, so in October 1787 the government purchased the Royal Gunpowder Factory from John Walton for £10,000, and so started a 204 year ownership. Under the Deputy Comptroller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich, Major Sir William Congreve, a man of immense drive and vision, manufacturing of gunpowder moved from what had been a ‘black art’ into an advanced technology.
The Royal Gunpowder Factory was now able to respond successfully in volume and quality to the massive increases in demand that arose during the period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, from 1789 and culminating in the victory at Waterloo in 1815.
During the 19th Century, while still producing gunpowder for military use in the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and Boer War, improvements in military explosives had a strong influence in the production of gunpowder for civilian uses, such as mining, tunnelling and railway construction. This created a massive demand for gunpowder.
The First World War brought a huge increase in the demand for explosives and the Royal Gunpowder Factory expanded to meet the requirements of the Armed Services. After the war it was decided that production would be moved from Waltham Abbey for fear of future air attacks. However, research and production work was still carried out on TNT and a new explosive, RDX.
During the Second World War Waltham Abbey remained an important cordite production unit and for the first two years of the war, the only producer of RDX. But with the transfer of production to other Royal Ordnance Factories around the country, production at Waltham Abbey finally came to an end, and the Royal Gunpowder Factory was closed in 1943.
In 1945 Waltham Abbey was re-opened as a research centre for military propellant and high explosives. Research continued on the site until 1991, when following a government re-organisation of its research establishments, it was decided to once again close Waltham Abbey and so ending more than 400 years of explosives production and research on this site.
