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The Royal Ordnance Factory at Hayes

S

StuartBrown

Member
Nick Holder (Museum of London) has written a short book about a little known Ordnance Factory that existed in Hayes, just a mile or so north of Heathrow. The factory was involved in tank and gun engineering in World War Two. Some time after the war it became a highly secure records 'office' for the Ministry of Defence, a role that has only relatively recently been given up.

The book is only 50 pages and 'perfect' bound. Nothing very technical or statistical in the book, just a nice piece of local history. I got my copy from Oxbow Books Limited, Oxford for 7 and only 85 pence postage.
 
Sounds interesting. I live a few miles from there and I never knew this factory existed.
 
Just a bit south of there. Over the canal and about half a mile towards the airport. I think the Heathrow Express goes underground just where the old Ordnance Factory was.
 
Just a short walk from the site of the OF is Cherry Lane Cemetary which houses a memorial to the 37 EMI employees who were killed in July 1944 when a V1 struck the surface air raid shelter they had just re-entered. The EMI site is less than a mile from the OF site. EMI made fuzes, 20mm Guns, H2S Radar, Gliders etc., during WW2.

In the 1960s army cadets living on the Bourne Avenue estate next to the OF were frequently digging up weapon parts from the fields between the OF and the cemetary. The fields had apparently had been used to bury a considerable amount of unwanted material at the end of the war.
 
I think I will now have to get an 18 Pounder projectile and have it painted up with the markings of the Hayes filling station. This projectile in a Gramophone Company case will be a "local" item for the collection.
 
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