Buckshaw Village AKA Royal Ordnance Euxton

This is more of a historical & informative thread about perhaps the second most secretive place nearby, BAE Warton being the first. Though the R.O.E has always fascinated me as a kid, there used to be M.P's on patrol, if i remember rightly they had a couple of big ass on display. This place is huge and i'm sure it used to extend underground even further than what you can see on the images. I always though my dad exagerated about all the goings on there!

As I got older, my first full time employment led to me working in a hotel not far form the ROE. I became a conf porter and just happened to be on duty one night when the ROE had a induction conference, they had one every month and most appeared to be new recruits.

The trainers always bought huge black secruity locked heavy duty cases full of material. One night they left all the training materials out, obvioulsy i checked them over.

I wasn't shocked by what i saw i kinda expected it rocket, grenade, Armour piercing shell cross sections picture of damage and so on. As i worked my way round the table i got the safety and ROE history section! This huge folder stamped "eyes Only" "top secret". I'm not claiming this is a all revealing document, far from it! Though i saw pictures of people living at the ROE, bakery's, laundrys huge rail system for works etc, then accidents and deaths and it was then it struck me that this place was an immense place to work at and must have been a integral part of the armed forces.

BTW the material was never left out again in the two years i worked there!

Anyway im sure this is of interest to people even just in a historical sense!

The reason i say historical is that they demolished this site and turned it in too the aformentioned Buckshaw Village, What another immense task, anyone know what would have been involved??

Good job google aint upto date eh?

If anyone has any other information regarding this site please post i'd be fascinated to find out what you know

This is it below, the second pic is off lower down the map where you can see a line of white buildingds IIRC were the armed patrol entrance gates, notice how the train line runs behind the entrance gates.

Anyway once agin this isn't for debate more of me putting out the feelers for Info on ROE and me giving members a low down on this place



Google Maps

maps.google.com...,+Astley+Village,+Chorley,+Lancashire,+PR7,+UK&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=53.671697,-2.657404&spn= 0.015381,0.060768

[edit on 7/24/2006 by evo1981]

[edit on 7/24/2006 by evo1981]

Sorry about all the edits,

Heres a bit more info relating too ROF sorry not ROE, the locals just call it that


Wikipedia

This one makes me laugh in the "post War" section as it goes onto say that they had the area penciled in for a town site. As building planners were unaware of its excistince. It was omitted from the OS maps and normal guidlines supposed to be followed for building sites like this ignored when ROF Chorley was commisned!

Wiki 2

This is form a guy who worked there im sure this place was very dark & secret in its hey day!

I worked as a driver a the ROF for 12 years 1978-1990. There was a road that went right through the factory called central road, once one of the drivers got permission to test drive his racing car along this road, it was just about 1 mile long.
As a driver I worked with the on site surgery as the ambulance driver and saw many accidents there.
All workers there had to live by a rule book called MOD manual 9.

The factory was the biggest engineering construction in the whole of Europe. There was a huge cement mixer brought from the USA. The factory was bomb proof with some of the walls being 16ft thick. Maybe some people who worked there during the war would remember the Bloody Mary's, They were big circlar buildings which looked like the funnels of a big ship. Inside these men worked on high explosive and if there was an explosion, and there was! the blast would be directed upward throught the top of the roof.

I have a theory that there was/is a tunnel from ROF Heapy to ROF Chorley, three miles long. I have met people who claim to have been inside it. I believe it was built as an integeral part of the factory as an auxillary backup just i case the rail lines where bombed. I believe it was one of the best kept secrets of the second world war.

This next link tells how there were 35,000 people employed there during the war effort

archive.thisislancashire.co.uk...

i live in chorley and know that the tall boy and the bouncing bomb were produced at euxton. what is of more interest is the alleged 'strategic reserve' at heapy..
2 entire classes of steam locomotive just vanished in the 60's and local wisdom has it that they are stored in 4 blast proof bunkers in the hills around heapey!!!

and it can be seen on google earth

Originally posted by holtmark70
i live in chorley and know that the tall boy and the bouncing bomb were produced at euxton. what is of more interest is the alleged 'strategic reserve' at heapy..
2 entire classes of steam locomotive just vanished in the 60's and local wisdom has it that they are stored in 4 blast proof bunkers in the hills around heapey!!!

and it can be seen on google earth

where have you a link or co ords? It would be interesting to view.

the old chorley/euxton site is at 53,40,40,36north 2,39,33,88 west and heapy is at 53,40,49,59north 2,35,12,42west hope this helps

reply to post by holtmark70


I hope you'll forgive the intrusion but this might be of interest to you chaps...

I live not far from the former site of the royal naval munitions factory call sign "cordite poole" which as the name suggests made cordite propellant for naval guns - which gave a highly explosive charge but without the big flash previously associated with high explosive charges.

the site is located here:

50.40'06.43" x 2.04'39.06"

www.flashearth.com...

an interesting article on it can be found here:

en.wikipedia.org...

photos of its present condition can be found here:

dangerkeepout.com...

and for those of you who still use libraries there is a book simply called 'cordite poole' which tells all and has hundreds of photos in it.

when cordite production cesaed the defence research people took it over and carried out research into advanced materials. i know the chap who was in charge of the place almost untill it closed and the site was influentlial in the development of carbon fibre composites, light alloy metals and of all things a type of lycra!

hope this is interesting to you.

ps you can try the following link, it doesn't work for me but who knows!

www.corfe-castle.demon.co.uk...