Description

SY 99SW
235/3/10009
21-AUG-00

WAREHAM ST MARTIN
LABORATORY SQUARE
St Martin's Hill
Main Offices at former Royal Naval Cordite Factory

GV
II

General offices. 1915, by Fox and Sons of London for the Admiralty. Flemish bond brick with gauged and rubbed red brick to flat window arches and to front doorcase; hipped plain tile roof, swept to cast-iron guttering and flush dentilled eaves. Rectangular plan with central hallway. Neo-Georgian style. 2 storeys. Horned 6/6-pane sashes to first floor and 6/9-pane sashes to ground floor. North elevation facing into parade ground has raised plinth with flanking pilasters to slightly-projecting outer bays. The latter each have one first-floor over 2 ground-floor windows. Three rows of windows flank the central first-floor window and doorway. Panelled double doors with fanlight set in fine brick doorcase, with keyed semi-circular arch set in pilasters to flat entablature. Similar fenestration to rear, the central bay having four 2/2-pane sashes set under a semi-circular relieving arch. Seven-window side elevations.
Interior: panelled doors in moulded wood architraves. Double-height hall lit by roof lantern and surrounded by first-floor gallery on three sides which has wooden handrail to iron balconies set in semi-circular arched openings which span each side.Dog-leg staircase to rear of hall with wooden handrail to iron balustrade.

HISTORY: Holton Heath comprises the most significant of the explosives factories constructed for the British government during the First World War, very different in its plan form and development from earlier sites - notably Waltham Abbey - which had been based on gunpowder production; later sites, such as the Royal Naval Propellants Factory of 1938 at Caerwent in south Wales, benefitted from the technology gained at Holton Heath. The site at Holton Heath, adjacent to a railway and well-placed for export to the principal naval dockyards, was selected in autumn 1914 by the Admiralty for the manufacture of the Royal Navy's independant supply of cordite for shells. It was opened in January 1916. The hills at the centre of the site were used for a reservoir and nitroglycerine plant. In the inter-war period, Holton Heath, together with Woolwich Arsenal - where Frederick Abel's 1860s offices have been listed grade II - became the site of the British government's most important explosives research laboratory. The nitroglycerine factory was reconstructed after a massive explosion in 1931, the site's most prominent feature - a massive mound containing a Schmid continuous production plant, ordered from the Meissner corporation in Cologne and now a unique surviving example - dating from this period. A picrite factory, for the production of flashless cordite (an important development in explosives technology), was constructed at the beginning of World War II.

The part of the site built from late 1916 for the production of acetone (a major ingredient in cordite) has international significance for the its application of biotechnology on an industrial scale: see the Cooker House (qv). The acetone plant with its vats in the south-western corner of the site, the nitration plant and cordite press plant within the central area, and the cordite drying plant and picrite factory to the east are Scheduled Ancient Monuments. The subjects of additional schedulings are the anti-aircraft sites and bombing decoy sites to the south, constructed for the protection of the site during the Second World War.

The administrative block and laboratory buildings comprise the principal elements in a formal layout on the west side of the factory, facing each other around an open space with a small test laboratory building positioned opposite the west entrance gates and explosives stores to the north (qqv). The laboratories controlled the testing of raw materials coming into the site and the quality of explosives manufactured on the site. To its is a group of stores for explosive samples, very similar in form to the expense magazines found on other explosives sites such as Waltham Abbey. The buildings, built to the designs of Fox and Sons of London, are all designed in the neo-Georgian style adopted for the administrative buildings associated with the government control of munitions which Lloyd George introduced as the National Factories Scheme in 1916. Thirty six explosives factories were built, mostly occupying areas of between 200 and 300 acres, of which the most significant is Holton Heath. With the exception of the National Machine Gun Factory in Burton-on-Trent, this group of buildings comprises the most important purpose-built complex to have survived from this programme.

(M R Bowditch and L Hayward, A Pictorial History of the Royal Naval Cordite Factory, Holton Heath, Wareham, 1996; W Cocroft, Dangerous Energy (draft text, unpublished), RCHME)

Listing NGR: SY9430090903

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26662188

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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