Royal Gunpowder Factory Waltham Abbey

The former Royal Gunpowder Factory is located to the north of Highbridge Street, Waltham Abbey, and extends northwards for 2.1km to Fishers Green. The site covers an area of 77 hectares (190 acres) and is bounded by the Cornmill Stream and Old River Lee to the east, and the Horsemill Stream to the west.

The site has the longest known continuous association with the manufacture of explosives of any site in the country. Saltpetre and sulphur, two of the principal ingredients for gunpowder (the third being charcoal), were being supplied as long ago as 1561, and the town was the nation's principal producer of gunpowder by 1662. Legend extends the association back into earlier ages, to the "Gunpowder Plot" conspiracy of 1605, to the defeat of the Spanish Armada by Elizabeth's navy, and even to the first recorded use of gunpowder by English soldiers at the Battle of Crecy in 1346.

 It is known that the site contained gunpowder mills in 1672 and that under successive generations of the Walton family, it developed into the largest and most complete works in Britain by 1735. The site was sold to the government in 1787 and has remained in public ownership ever since. The Royal Gunpowder Mills, as they were then known, were a major supplier of powder to the Army during the Napoleonic Wars and, despite peacetime cutbacks in production, manufacture continued throughout the 19th century. The surviving shells of the steam-powered incorporating mills are mainly from this period. Earlier production took place in water-powered mills.

The last 100 years have seen the diversification of production to include nitroglycerine, cordite, TNT, and the high explosive RDX, used extensively by the RAF in World War II. The site closed as a production factory in 1945 becoming the government's Explosives Research and Development Establishment (ERDE) in 1947, later named the Propellants, Explosives and Rocket Motor Establishment (PERME) and finally, the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE).

The site can be divided into two main areas. The northern half is covered almost entirely by alder woodland (the original source of charcoal), and is designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Site of Special Scientific Interest,  primarily because it contains the largest heronry in Essex. The area to the south contains most of the buildings on the site, twenty one of which are listed (eight at Grade I and II*).

Click here to view a map of the Royal Gunpowder Factory Conservation Area