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Rof GlascoedIn the late 1930s leading up to the outbreak of World War II the British government developed a strategy to disperse armaments and munitions production away from the urban areas and south-east England which were felt to be vulnerable to bombing. As a result the Ministry of Supply took responsibility to build a number of satellite ordnance factories. One of these was sited in a valley at Glascoed between Pontypool and Usk in Monmouthshire. The site was chosen for its sheltered topography surrounded by hills and a micro-climate suited for handling explosives. Additionally the need for a large workforce was a benefit to a region of the UK that had experienced particularly heavy unemployment in the 1930s Great Depression. Land was acquired by compulsory purchase and was mostly farmland. The factory was designed by staff at Woolwich Arsenal and was based on their long experience in munitions production. Safety considerations were to the fore. These included the construction, style and spacing of individual production buildings separated by grass-covered earth embankments and extremely thick reinforced concrete walls and bridges to deflect any explosions skyward. There were underground storage magazines, lightning protection and a very dispersed and open site layout. Construction on the 1,000 acre (405 hectare) site started in 1939 and was undertaken by a building company from Cardiff. Eventually Royal Ordnance Factory Glascoed boasted nearly 700 separate buildings, in excess of 10 miles (16 km) of roadways, an 8 mile (13 km) perimeter fence and its own 17 mile (27km) railway system. This system included a dedicated three platform passenger station and a freight marshalling yard. It was linked to the Great Western Railway (GWR) branch line that ran between Little Mill Junction and Monmouth. This rail link enabled the three-times daily movement of up to 13,000 workers in and out of the site as well as the import of raw materials and components and the despatch of finished munitions. A small housing estate was built close by to accommodate managers and staff who had to respond quickly in emergencies. Initially it was intended that Glascoed would be the major producer of munitions for the Royal Navy. However wartime output was largely dominated by the explosive filling and finishing of sea-mines for the navy and heavy bombs and pyrotechnics such as target indicators and skymarkers for the Royal Air Force. Among the bombs completed by Glascoed were the bouncing bomb, designed by Barnes Wallis and delivered to the Ruhr area of Germany by the Dambusters, RAF 617 squadron. As it was believed that the local Folly Tower situated on a hill top in nearby Pontypool would aid the German Luftwaffe as an aiming-off point to attack the ROF factory, this was demolished and not rebuilt until the 1990s. Glascoed factory was attacked from the air only twice during the war. One worker was killed and several injured by a lone bomber who caused minor damage. The bomber's crew were convinced they had bombed Filton aerodrome in Bristol, some forty miles (65 km) away. As demand for weapons and ammunition declined with the end of the war, many ordnance factories were closed. Glascoed was retained and supplemented its output by manufacturing concrete building products and by scrapping surplus munitions. The growing hostility of the Cold War as evidenced by the Korean War saw a much wider range of munitions assembled, filled and packed at Glascoed. These included ammunition for field guns and howitzers, tanks and other fighting vehicles, mortar and aerial bombs, warheads for missiles and torpedoes, flares and pyrotechnics, smoke bombs. In recent years Glascoed remains the only ammunition filling facility in the UK and exports product as well as supplying the British Ministry of Defence (MoD). The factory has developed an expertise with Insensitive Munitions (IM) to minimise the risk of accidents such as occurred on the USS Forrestal in 1967. Weapons using IM are much less likely to be inadvertantly detonated by dropping, heat, friction or impact. Along with the other ROFs, Glascoed was operated by Royal Ordnance, a government department, until it was privatised by the government in 1987. Today Glascoed is a business unit of BAE Systems Land Systems. Glascoed now employs about 400 people and is investing heavily in R&D and improved production facilities. Until the mid-1990s, British Ordnance Survey maps were completely blank where ROF sites were located. More recent editions show the detail of the buildings, road and rail links, labelled simply as "Depot". External links
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