18 C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 and often completed with a central fountain.As available space became diminished within the Arsenal, the courtyards began to be in filled with ever more workshops. At the start of the first world war the Arsenal was a sea of glass and slate roofs and smoking chimneys. Before the war most of the 11,000 jobs at the Royal Arsenal (of which 6,000 were classified as skilled engineering) were undertaken by men, as was usual.2 With the call for men or ‘buddies’ to join up, it was necessary for women to take up the work. The rate of shell production at the Arsenal and other factories had dropped dramatically, with the result that the conflict on the western front sank into a state of stalemate in late 1914. Over the 475-mile front line, from Belgium to the Swiss border, the need for artillery shells became a serious problem. At the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March 1915, for example, the British forces fired more shells in a 35-minute bombardment than had been used in the whole BoerWar. By May 1915 the Allied guns were reduced to firing just four shells a day each. The crisis led to the downfall of Asquith’s Liberal government. It was replaced by a coalition led by Asquith with Lloyd George, to whom the Arsenal song was dedicated, as minister of munitions.3 The shell crisis at the front was made worse back home by the targeting of men seen on the streets of Britain not in uniform, first by recruiting sergeants and then by ‘super-patriotic’ suffragettes. The campaign gained momentum when Admiral Charles Fitzgerald founded the Order of the White Feather. So effective was the campaign that the government was issued employees in state industries with lapel badges that read ‘King and Country’.They were known as OnWar (military) Service or OWS. The Royal Arsenal Badge was considered by the workers as the most prestigious of them.4 Not only was there a shift in the demographic of the workforce but the scale of production required a significant increase in the labour force.To accommodate such a rapid increase, 3,000 new homes were hurriedly built within the Well Hall Road area of Woolwich. A crèche able to take 700 children was set up for the workers. It is thought to have been the first workplace crèche in the country.5 When war ended, so did most of the work at the Royal Arsenal. In spite of proposals by the McKinnon Wood Committee of 1919 that alternative forms of manufacture should be undertaken at the site, the number of people employed there fell between 1918 and the end of 1919 by 50,000. By 1922 only 6,000 jobs remained. A memorandum in 1921 had concluded that it was perhaps the ideal moment to demolish the Woolwich Arsenal.6 The consensus of the Stevenson Interdepartmental Committee was that this would be unwise, if only because of the cost.That view prevailed. The war had been a contest of industrial might at the heart of which, for the allies, was the Royal Arsenal. It has been estimated that the British fired 170 million shells on the western front. Employment at the Royal Arsenal increased to 40,000 in advance of the second world war, but the number of jobs and the level of production were never as high as in the first. After the second world war the Arsenal was again in crisis. Alternative uses for the site were devised, including the manufacture of knitting machines and railway wagons. In the 1950s tanks were assembled in the former Carriage Workshops. The decision to close the site was finally taken in 1964, and closure followed in 1967. The 200 hectares of old firing ranges to the east were dispensed with first, becoming the site of ThamesmeadTown. It was a further 30 years before the historic core of the Royal Arsenal site was finally sold to English Partnerships for regeneration for the sum of £1. References 2 BBC website, June 2014, ‘The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, UK: the role of women workers’ 3 David, S, February 2012, BBC website, ‘How Germany Lost theWW1 Arms Race’ 4Williams, J, 2010, From Corn to Cordite: the story of the British Explosives Syndicate, Pitsea 5Watson, G, June 2014, BBC website, ‘World War One: Royal Arsenal’s battle to feed the guns’ 6 Guillery, P, 2012, Woolwich, Survey of London,Volume 48 See also Stevenson, M, 2007, Regeneration through Heritage: understanding the development potential of historic European arsenals, English Heritage (Far right) First world war memorial, Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. Copyright English Heritage The entrance to Dial Square at the Royal Arsenal (1717–20). The piers are topped by pyramids of cannon balls. Mark Stevenson is an archaeology advisor with National Planning and Conservation.
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