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HM Factory, Gretna

Railway sidings at MOD Depot Smalmstown
The site of Wylies Halt where workers from Eastriggs township would get trains into the HM Factory, Gretna
An original wooden workers house in Eastriggs
St John's Episcopal Church, Eastriggs was built in 1917.
The River Esk pumping station had three electric pumps which could discharge up to 5 million gallons of water a day.
Security fencing around MOD Eastriggs, c. 2008

H.M. Factory, Gretna was Britain's largest cordite factory during the First World War. The government-owned facility was adjacent to the Solway Firth, near Gretna, Dumfries and Galloway. It was built by the Ministry of Munitions in response to the Shell Crisis of 1915. The capital cost was £9,184,000 (£785,700,000 in 2024) and it covered 9,000 acres (36 km2). The cost of working it from September 1916 to September 1918 was £12,769,000, during which time it produced cordite valued at £15,000,000, though it was claimed that without it the cordite would have had to be imported from the USA at a cost of £23,600,000.[1]

The Devil's Porridge Museum, Eastriggs, Dumfriesshire, commemorates the efforts of these workers during the .

  1. ^ "Gretna Green - Scandal of cost of Munitions Town". Sheffield Evening Telegraph. 8 August 1919. p. 2.

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HM Factory, Gretna French

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