The 'Introduce yourself' Thread

Carnaby;143191 wrote:

The Ardol Clock Tower is HERE

When I drove past there last year, I think if I remember right, alot of it had been demolished.

I drove past there many times on the way to both Burn and Snaith but with the new by-pass road being built I have not been past for quite a few years .
The factory always looked impressive and I recall seeing what looked like air raid shelters built into the river embankment ?

That's it. It was known as 'The Olympia Oil and Cake Factory' the largest oil processing plant in Europe.

I located it last night but due to incompetence with a tablet PC could not cut and paste a link!

Just to add that it existed pre-WW1 and produced oil from flaxseed (Linseed Oil) by crushing, straining and refining. The residue, known as 'cake' was then used as cattle feed supplement. The refined oil was then hydrogenated. Since that process required gaseous oxygen, it required either on-site production or importing in liquid or gaseous form. Whether or not it had a gas plant is of interest only to consider whether that plant could be modified to produce Chlorine or Phosgene, the war gases. Not quite my line so I shall see what processes were available at that time. Otherwise, the war gas(es) would have been imported in drums along with the shell cases. As to the size of the workforce I don't know but it is almost certain that, as it converted to a Filling Factory for the Ministry of Munitions, that the men went off to war and women dominated the labour.

Carnaby;143191 wrote:

The Ardol Clock Tower is HERE

Yes - the clock tower has gone now although the name remains for the bus stop opposite where it stood.

Have since found more about the factory from archaeologydataservice.ac.uk which produced a report about archaeological sites in the area when they were building the new Selby by-pass.

www.google.co.uk/#q=barlby+munitions+factory

I presume this is the report. It's interesting.

tinyurl.com/nl86fro

Thanks. I used to have that site as one of my home tabs but dropped it and forgot about it!

Only had a quick look but interested to see that the factory did have a Phosgene plant and appears not to have been 'nationalised' until 1918 at which point I believe it was then termed a National Filling Factory.

The magazine predates the site being late 19th century so would have been for black powder storage. Perhaps not milled on site but brought in from elsewhere.

Anyway, you seem to have found the answers to all your questions and I have been enlightened along the way.

Thank you - I have learned a lot in the last few days. Military history has not been my field at all. However, like a lot of research, new questions keep cropping up. For instance - what is the significance of saying that it was not "nationalised" until 1918? It was still filling shells with gas before that wasn't it?

Also - the interesting fact that there appears to have been a magazine there in the late 19th century which few people seemed to know about locally until this report - what was the "black powder" you referred to?

PETERTHEEATER;143229 wrote:

Thanks. I used to have that site as one of my home tabs but dropped it and forgot about it!

Only had a quick look but interested to see that the factory did have a Phosgene plant and appears not to have been 'nationalised' until 1918 at which point I believe it was then termed a National Filling Factory.

The magazine predates the site being late 19th century so would have been for black powder storage. Perhaps not milled on site but brought in from elsewhere.

Anyway, you seem to have found the answers to all your questions and I have been enlightened along the way.

Thanks Paul. For me, the Ministry of Munitions history is the definitive document. When I skimmed through the Archeological report, on-line it was backed with a Bibliography but my downloaded copy is corrupted and wont open so I can't view the author's souce. The site too is slow of access.

Debusfield, the significance of nationalisation is that, in this case, the Ministry of Munitions for whom the factory was a contractor, was dissatisfied with their performance because they failed to meet production quotas. By nationalising, control was taken from the contractor management to ministry management at a higher level. Whether things improved remains to be exposed.

Black powder is commonly known as 'gunpowder' the predominant late 19th century propellant and explosive prior to the advent of chemical explosives. Since the site has a riverside location, it is likely that there were gunpowder mills located there for waterwheel edgerunner mills to grind the ingredients for gunpowder. Mixed powder would have been packed into wooden kegs and stored in the 'magazine' prior to shipping by barge.

But, more likely, it was just a powder magazine receiving, holding and issuing located for convenience. Some magazines like this were commercial for servicing mining operations (blasting) others military.

I'm struggling to find that archaeological report, The link posted by dbusfield wont open (leads to a PDF?) and Carnaby's link just goes to the ADB site from which the search function struggles refusing to filter. I assume that the report is archived?

Can someone give a direct link to the report PDF please?