HM Factory Gretna and the Munitionettes

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The factory is documented in Ministry of Munitions records, surveys by Historic Environment Scotland and the collections of the Devil's Porridge Museum. Figures for output and workforce vary between sources depending on the date measured and whether construction workers are included. The claim that it outproduced all other British cordite factories combined depends on the higher output figure.

Answering the Shell Crisis

established In 1915 British forces on the Western Front ran short of artillery shells, a scandal known as the Shell Crisis. The government set up a nationwide munitions programme, and HM Factory Gretna was planned as a huge new plant for cordite, the smokeless propellant used in shells and bullets. A remote site on the Solway was chosen, with rail links, water and space. Construction began in November 1915, with up to 10,000 Irish navvies building the factory and two townships.

A factory nine miles long

established The factory covered 9,000 acres and stretched about nine miles across the border, from Dornock in Scotland to storage depots at Longtown in England. It had four production sites, 80 miles of narrow-gauge railway with 34 engines, and more than 600 rail wagons of materials arriving each day. Its capital cost was £9,184,000. The new wooden townships of Gretna and Eastriggs housed workers and had their own bakeries, laundry and police.

The devil's porridge

established Cordite was made by mixing guncotton and nitroglycerine into a paste. When Arthur Conan Doyle visited the factory as a war correspondent in 1916, he described the paste being kneaded by hand as "the devil's porridge", a name now used by the museum at Eastriggs.

shared At its peak the factory produced either about 800 tons of cordite a week or about 1,400 tons, depending on the source. At the higher figure it is described as producing more than all other British munitions plants combined.

The Gretna Girls

established By 1917 the factory employed 11,576 women and 5,066 men. Many of the women were recruited from across Britain and lived in hostels in the townships. The work was dangerous, and medals were awarded for bravery during an explosion, but it paid well. Complaints about workers spending high wages on drink led the government to nationalise pubs and breweries around Carlisle under the State Management Scheme, which lasted until the 1970s.

After the war

established Production ended soon after the Armistice in November 1918. Redundancies began in December 1918, and the final closure notice was issued in August 1919. The manufacturing plants were demolished in 1919–1920, and parts of the site were auctioned or returned to farmland. From the 1930s parts of the site became ammunition depots, and the Eastriggs depot remained in use until about 2010. The Devil's Porridge Museum in Eastriggs, on its present site since 2014, tells the factory's story.

• The factory stretched about nine miles across the Scotland–England border.
• It had 80 miles of its own railway.
• Up to 10,000 Irish navvies helped build it.
• More than twice as many women as men worked there in 1917.
• Arthur Conan Doyle named the cordite paste "the devil's porridge".
• The townships' bakeries made 14,000 meals a day.
• Drinking by workers led the government to take over Carlisle's pubs.
• King George V and Queen Mary visited in 1917.

• Do not give a single peak output figure as certain.
• Do not say the factory outproduced all other British plants combined without noting that this depends on the higher figure.
• Do not give a single date for the start of production.
• Do not present workforce figures from different dates as directly comparable.