Heat Test Laboratory at Former Royal Naval Cordite Factory

Heat Test Laboratory at former Royal Naval Cordite Factory

Laboratory built in 1915 by Fox and Sons of London for the Admiralty. The building is constructed in Flemish bond brick with red brick dressings, including gauged and rubbed window arches. It has a hipped plain tile roof with cast-iron guttering fixed to projecting dentilled timber eaves. The laboratory is a single-storey rectangular plan building in the neo-Georgian style.

The west elevation facing Laboratory Square has keyed arches over a four-pane by four-pane sash window on the left-hand side and, to the right, two similar sash windows flanking a glazed door with overlight, all divided by glazing bars into small panes. The other elevations have similar fenestration. The interior was not inspected.

The laboratory formed part of Holton Heath, which comprises the most significant explosives factory constructed for the British government during the First World War. The site was selected in autumn 1914 by the Admiralty and opened in January 1916 to manufacture the Royal Navy's independent supply of cordite for shells. It was positioned adjacent to a railway and well-placed for export to the principal naval dockyards.

The administrative block and laboratory buildings comprise the principal elements in a formal layout on the west side of the factory, facing each other around an open space. This small test laboratory building was positioned opposite the west entrance gates and explosives stores to the north. The laboratories controlled the testing of raw materials coming into the site and the quality of explosives manufactured there. To the north is a group of stores for explosive samples, very similar in form to the expense magazines found on other explosives sites such as Waltham Abbey.

All the buildings were designed by Fox and Sons of London in the neo-Georgian style, which was adopted for the administrative buildings associated with the government control of munitions under Lloyd George's National Factories Scheme introduced in 1916. Thirty-six explosives factories were built under this programme, most occupying areas of between two hundred and three hundred acres, of which Holton Heath is the most significant. With the exception of the National Machine Gun Factory in Burton-on-Trent, this group of buildings comprises the most important purpose-built complex to have survived from this programme.