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Hi All
Well the travelling Newage & Fluffy (AKA Cockney boy)millitary site tours continues. This time off to sunny Dorset to vist the former Royal naval Cordite factory at Holton Heath so with the trusty 4X4 full of maps,
coffee and the sound of more AC/DC oh and as a special treat for Cockney boy 1 packet of Rainbow drops, well that's the food and drink sorted. Off we set form Oxfordshire to Dorcet about 2 hours.
Fluffy got the heads up on how to get in and his contact was spot on.
Holton heath was built to make Cordite for the RN during the first world war, the site was chosen in 1914.
As with any explosive factory it's away form populated areas and alll the building are sunken in to the grond or are under ground.
To make Cordite the process needs some nasty chemicals like concentrated Nitric acid, concentrated Sulphuric acid, Actone, Nitrocellulose, and the wonderfully safe Nitroglycerin all of which was made on the site, the process also needs vast amounts of water.
The Holton heath site is BIG (no not just BIG it's "E-F****** normus") we spent 7 hours in there and only saw about 1/3 of it. Most of the site has not been Chaved because the site is over grown, covered in Gorse and brambles and the Ants OMG the Ants......
The first building you get to is the boiler house
Then on to a large building it looks like a mess building with showers and an out side blast wall with loop hole built in to it.
There are blast shelter all over the place, and they are big most are doubles.as you can see from the picture on the left they are oval shaped.
After these we made our way across the site to the reservoir, we came in from the back and it was a nightmare to get up the hill and through the gorse and brambles but when you see the place WOW.
The building on the right is the valve room and gives access to the under ground reservoir.
Just had to try and use Fluffy's LASER pointer for some thing a little different. I thinks you can just read that it says NEWAGE.
Some of the larger building are very well hidden in the trees. But we did come across this, it's building P17
Next was building P4, which was a press building and control center.
After walking round and looking at many more under ground buildings we headed off to try and find the "fire watchers tower" Now that I've done some more research it's actually
called the control trench OP1.
You are just going to love this, oh baby.
This is the view from the top and the picture on the right is from inside the pixie house.
You just know you want to know whats down that ladder....
Well.......
These is an entrance at ground level, so you don't have to go down the ladder of DOOM!!!!!
Here are a few more pictures from around the site, they are in no type of order so enjoy.
Well that's about it for now, well done if you got this far, sorry for all the pictures but the site is so big putting up 2 or 3 just does not do the place justice. as usual there are plenty more on my FlickR page at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/newage2/sets/72157618094995904/
Any comments are most welcome
Cheers Newage and Fluffy
Well the travelling Newage & Fluffy (AKA Cockney boy)millitary site tours continues. This time off to sunny Dorset to vist the former Royal naval Cordite factory at Holton Heath so with the trusty 4X4 full of maps,
coffee and the sound of more AC/DC oh and as a special treat for Cockney boy 1 packet of Rainbow drops, well that's the food and drink sorted. Off we set form Oxfordshire to Dorcet about 2 hours.
Fluffy got the heads up on how to get in and his contact was spot on.
Holton heath was built to make Cordite for the RN during the first world war, the site was chosen in 1914.
As with any explosive factory it's away form populated areas and alll the building are sunken in to the grond or are under ground.
To make Cordite the process needs some nasty chemicals like concentrated Nitric acid, concentrated Sulphuric acid, Actone, Nitrocellulose, and the wonderfully safe Nitroglycerin all of which was made on the site, the process also needs vast amounts of water.
The Holton heath site is BIG (no not just BIG it's "E-F****** normus") we spent 7 hours in there and only saw about 1/3 of it. Most of the site has not been Chaved because the site is over grown, covered in Gorse and brambles and the Ants OMG the Ants......
The first building you get to is the boiler house
Then on to a large building it looks like a mess building with showers and an out side blast wall with loop hole built in to it.
There are blast shelter all over the place, and they are big most are doubles.as you can see from the picture on the left they are oval shaped.
After these we made our way across the site to the reservoir, we came in from the back and it was a nightmare to get up the hill and through the gorse and brambles but when you see the place WOW.
The building on the right is the valve room and gives access to the under ground reservoir.
Just had to try and use Fluffy's LASER pointer for some thing a little different. I thinks you can just read that it says NEWAGE.
Some of the larger building are very well hidden in the trees. But we did come across this, it's building P17
Next was building P4, which was a press building and control center.
After walking round and looking at many more under ground buildings we headed off to try and find the "fire watchers tower" Now that I've done some more research it's actually
called the control trench OP1.
You are just going to love this, oh baby.
This is the view from the top and the picture on the right is from inside the pixie house.
You just know you want to know whats down that ladder....
Well.......
These is an entrance at ground level, so you don't have to go down the ladder of DOOM!!!!!
Here are a few more pictures from around the site, they are in no type of order so enjoy.
Well that's about it for now, well done if you got this far, sorry for all the pictures but the site is so big putting up 2 or 3 just does not do the place justice. as usual there are plenty more on my FlickR page at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/newage2/sets/72157618094995904/
Any comments are most welcome
Cheers Newage and Fluffy
Looks so sweet. Good report, well done.x
Great find.
