is it worth a visit?
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Royal Gunpowder Mills
- Thread starter batonroundcollector
- Start date
recommended to the collector rather than 'general' visitor though?
I reckon it is worth a visit, having gone there on 23rd September 2026. As well as the story of the manufacture of gunpowder and subsequent propellants there is a museum of deactivated weapons and also a museum containing dummy examples of the various solid fuel rocket motors that were designed and developed at Waltham Abbey. It was also great to see the herd of fallow deer that live on site. We were told that the total area covered nearly 500 acres but that much is now housing estates and the Lea Valley Country Park. The original sites lay both to the North of the present M25 and also to the South. There were successive large expansions in the 1890s, in WW1 and in WW2. At one time (in WW2) over 7000 people from Waltham Abbey and surrounding towns and villages worked on the site. We were told it has recently been discovered that German WW2 maps had the site blanked out, as Hitler wished to use it for future German production, after Britain had been invaded.