News and Forthcoming Events
13th April 2015: One Household at War: Women in Munitions at Gloucester
From the Colchester-Wemyss Collection at Gloucestershire Archive
Contemporary comment on the development of National Filling Factory No 5 Quedgeley
Following my blog of 20th February, a return to the Arkwright household of Kinsham Court, Presteigne, Herefordshire in World War I.
Background
One theme from World War I illustrated by the experience of the Arkwright family is the changing role of women. Always difficult to convey is contemporary feeling at observing these changes underway.
Particularly vivid in this regard is one of the letters of Maynard Colchester-Wemyss, Chairman of Gloucestershire County Council (1908-1918) who from 1915 assumed the additional role of Chief Constable of Gloucestershire Constabulary.
From 1910, the position of Chief Constable had been held by Richard Chester-Master, Jack Arkwright’s brother-in-law. Dick (as Chester-Master was known) rejoined his old regiment the King’s Royal Rifles in March 1915. With the 13th Battalion, he embarked for France on 30th July 1915.
In Dick’s absence, Colchester-Wemyss oversaw his duties. He also sustained a correspondence with Rama VI, King of Siam (Gloucester Archives, Ref D37). This covered a broad range of issues, including, when Dick returned on leave, the latest information about trench warfare, which Colchester-Wemyss would then convey to the King of Siam.
Women in Munitions at Gloucester
In the last blog I quoted Colchester-Wemyss’ comments on women on the railways; this time, it’s women in munitions factories (written 30th December 1915).
Then of course now in the Munition Factories thousands of women are employed, both in attending to the machinery that turns out the shells and in filling the completed shells with explosives. I think I have told you that a big munitions Factory is being rapidly erected near Gloucester; this is to be not for making shells, but simply for filling them; many different sizes & kinds of shells will be brought there, different explosives will be brought there, & there a small army of 2000 women will be employed in filling them. All these women will have to live in Gloucester, & they have put a siding right into the new works off the Railway, & every morning & evening a train will take them out & bring them back the 4 miles the works are from the City.
The munitions factory in question was Gloucester National Shell Filling Factory, built from 1915-16 three and a half miles south of Gloucester at Manor Farm, Quedgeley. The factory was in production from March 1916 until November 1918. During that time it was to produce nearly 10.3 million eighteen pounder shells, over 7 million cartridges, and 23 million fuses and other components. As Colchester-Wemyss wrote, the factory had a branch connection to the Midland Railway main line for the transport of workers and raw materials, but also nine miles of two foot narrow gauge line within the works for the movement of work in progress.
At its maximum, the Quedgeley factory employed not 2,000 women, but 6,364 people, approximately 5,000 of them women. This number fluctuated, particularly when scares from TNT poisoning took hold (December 1916). Symptoms included irritation of the skin which could turn yellow, resulting in the workers being known as ‘canary girls’. The women did most of the manufacturing and filling work. When taken on, many of them had previously worked as domestic servants, dress-makers, dairy-maids and factory or shop workers.
Male workers were generally either under 18 years of age, too old or unfit for service, or were discharged or wounded soldiers. They mainly undertook maintenance work or handled the trolleys on the internal rail network. Initially Gloucester and the surrounding villages supplied the labour force, who came to work by train, bicycle or on foot. As time went on, rail connections were made to Stroud and Cheltenham.
A lively social scene clearly took hold around the works as two sports days were held, in June 1917 and 1918. In addition to this clubs included those for hockey, football, cricket, bowls and tennis. In 1918 a factory band was formed. Plans for a choral society were curtailed by the end of the War.
Mercifully, there was no serious injury as a result of the explosives at the factory. The workforce had uniforms to wear while at work and searches for matches, cigarettes, pipes and tobacco were carried out. Between June 1916 and November 1918 only three females were prosecuted, fined or jailed for infringements of the rules, and 150 males.
Production at Quedgeley ceased in November 1918. The mainly wooden buildings were demolished from 1924-1926 and the site ultimately became part of RAF Quedgeley (closed February 1995). Today a new estate, Kingsway, has been developed on part of the site.
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The letter from which I quote above is at Gloucestershire Archives Ref D/37/1/87 M Colchester-Wemyss to King of Siam 30th December 1915
My sincere thanks to Gloucestershire Archives for permission to reproduce here the image of Edward Arthur Fellowes Prynne's 1918 portrait of Maynard Colchester-Wemyss. This can be seen at Gloucester Shire Hall.
For further details of making a visit to see the Colchester-Wemyss letters, click here.
For Brian Edwards’ excellent article on the history of this factory, ‘National Filling Factory No 5 Quedgeley’ Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology Journal, 1994 pp32-52 go to http://www.gsia.org.uk/reprints/1994/gi199432.pdf