Is this relatively new, or was it previously called something else?
Absolutely no-idea since last August when I first started this area, I saw the Brown sign's for this Museum along the A32. With sooo much else to explore around this 'Island'? I eventually got around to a visit last Thursday Sadly my battery's were getting very low, also the card was Full ! Had to keep finding things to delete.
The Chap up the ladder painting, (First picture) is a Museum Guide, he told me that this whole site was our Empire's largest munitions factory. Asking him if the Germans bombed it regularly, he told me that, that only happened a few time without much success. Good !!
Now that I know about this place, I will take a loonger look next time.
I believe that your both correct as Priddy's Hard in Gosport would have been in 1777 and Eastriggs in Dunfries & Galloway would have been around 1917.
I also believe that the Gosport museum started around 2001 and was then absorbed into a bigger musuem structure about 2009 ~ National Museum of the Royal Navy ?
The term 'munitions factory' is the key. In the 18th century Priddy's Hard was a gunpowder (black powder) storage magazine so it did not make gunpowder but stored it so was not a factory.
Moving into the late 19th century and gunowder was being superceded by chemical explosives and additional facilities were built for the filling of Naval mines and torpedoes so it was a 'filling factory'. Yet, it was not big in terms of quantity of output or size of area compared to other explosive factories or filling factories. The Navy's own Holton Heath cordite factory easily surpassed Priddy's Hard.
So, perhaps the word 'Empire' needs to be considered. If the era of the British Empire is taken as the late 16th to early 18th centuries then Priddy's Hard was the largest powder stors but not the largest factory.
Open to debate but it's not unusual for the term factory to be misused.
More to the point, for me, is that the magazine has been preserved because they don't do brickwork like that anymore:)
Is this relatively new, or was it previously called something else?
It has recently become part of the 'historic dockyard' museum collection in Portsmouth.
I believe it was there circa 2000, as gosports millennium walk takes you there. It has always been called explosion, and I remember going there as a pre-teen when it was a very small and low-key place.
A quick search on google brings up that it may have been established in 2001.
I hope to be going in the new year as it looks much better now, and holds lots of information and artifacts from Holton Heath cordite production area. Somewhere I love to go and have a look at. The huge perimeter fence means business, and so many old buildings can be seen through it.
Will make the most of the all attractions ticket and visit a few other sites while there.
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since last August when I first started this area, I saw the Brown sign's for this Museum along the A32. With sooo much else to explore around this 'Island'? I eventually got around to a visit last Thursday 
Sadly my battery's were getting very low, also the card was Full ! Had to keep finding things to delete.
