Review of 'Women at War and the Barnbow munitions incident' by Jacki & Bob Lawrence (February 2024)

When Great Britain went to war in 1914, there no stock of the ammunition which would be required by the artillery on the Western Front. Before 1914, war planning involved munitions for shrapnel (for attacking infantry) but the requirement for trench warfare involved high explosive shells. Initially this shortfall was made up by purchases from Canada. By 1915, this shortage of shells, especially for the 18 pounder guns, created a scandal. Asquith, the Prime Minister, appointed Lloyd-George as minister for munitions and arrangements were made across the country to build new munitions factories. The Munitions of War Act of 1915 guaranteed a supply of munitions for the rest of the war. Cordite was produced in a huge munitions factory at Gretna on the English-Scottish border and Barnbow was chosen as a filling factory, it was always known as No 1 (Leeds) National Filling Factory.

Local Yorkshire business men, Rupert Beckett & Algernon Firth were members of the Directing Board with John McLaren which set up a new company at Manston, Crossgates on land owned by Col Richard Gascoigne of Lotherton and bought by compulsory purchase. Munition sites were not constructed in built-up areas, since it would attract enemy aircraft, and also because such factories were prone to explosions. Construction work began at Barnbow in August 1915, and the site was built across two farms. It was split into eight blocks, as a means to avoid destroying the whole complex, should an explosion occur. As the estate lay close to a line of the North Eastern Railway, two internal spurs were built linking the site to the Leeds-Selby line. Overhead power lines were erected to bring electricity onto the site, and a watermain was installed to bring 200, 000 gallons of water daily.

Some 19,000 women were required for the work (in 56 rooms) and, after advertisements appeared, over 100,000 applied. The selected women were trained in London (at the Woolwich Arsenal) and were paid 28s a week for an eight-hour day. Increased responsibility (and the danger of working in the Amatol section) brought higher pay. There would be three shifts each day, twenty-four hour working six days a week. To bring the workforce into the factory, platforms of 800 ft were constructed at the nearby station servicing 38 ‘Barnbow Specials’ each day. Once the site was working at full capacity, over 300,000 shells were filled each week. The shells were filled with cordite (from Scotland) and Amatol (a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate), a fuse was fitted and then tightened. The shells were then transported to the Leeds-Selby line by the internal narrow gage railway spur pulled by horses.

The munitions factory was working within five months of the initial building work, March 1916. There were three boiler houses for the hot water require for laundry and heating. Each day over fifty trains left the factory – 38 which were labelled as special and 15 as ordinary. With so much special work, safety checks on the staff were essential, these were made by the security men specially employed for this duty. It was hard, dirty, dangerous work for the women employed in the factory. By compensation for this, the ladies would sing and chat noisily as they worked.  The fire crew, always on duty were, made up of eighteen ladies. Working with TNT was itself very dangerous, there were four deaths from TNT poising during the lifetime of the Barnbow factory.

There were three separate canteens for the staff, one for the men, one for the women and one for the Amatol workers. Fresh milk was delivered daily from the local farms and meat and vegetables sourced locally. There was medical care available free of charge, the factory employed both doctors and dentists.

The accident which killed 35 of the female workers occurred at 10.27 pm on Tuesday 5th December 1916 in Hut 42 as the night shift had just started. This hut was used to fill shells and fit the fuse and about 150 ladies worked here. Shells were brought in loaded with high explosive for the fuse to be fitted. First the fuse was screwed in by hand, then the fuse was tightened mechanically. One possible explanation for the incident was that the shell had been incorrectly filled before the fuse was fitted. The final mechanical tightening of the fuse had caused the explosion.

Over half of the workers were injured and pipes bringing hot water into the hut were fractured. Despite the danger, other workers hurried into the hut to bring out the survivors. One, William Parkin, a mechanic/engineer, managed to bring out a dozen of the wounded women. Survivors of the incident collected sufficient money to present William with a silver engraved watch.

After the dead and injured had been taken from the hut, production continued with volunteers from other huts taking over the final fusing fitting of Hut 42. No report of the accident ever appeared in any newspaper; the deaths were simply recorded as ‘killed by accident’. The injured ladies spent a period of convalescence at Weetwood Grange, paid for by the Barnbow Welfare Fund.
Stories, and a final account of the incident, did not merge until six years later. The December accident was not the only explosion at Barnbow, there were two further incidents, one in March 1917 (when two were killed) and the other in May 1918, when three were killed and ten injured. Casualties were low in both of these as the explosions occurred at shift changes. 

The Armistice on Nov 11th 1918 and end of WW1 resulted in the closure of Barnbow as a production centre, it had produced over 550,00 tons of finished ammunition including about 15% of British artillery shells filled in the UK. Initially it was used as a depot and eventually (in 1924) the land was sold off to Garforth Colliery Company and the last of the buildings were dismantled.
In 1925, the ‘Five Sisters Window’ in York Minster was rededicated to all the women of the British Empire who were killed in the line of duty during WW1, which included the women who died at Barnbow.  In 2016, the site of Barnbow Munitions Factory was listed as a scheduled monument and in Manston Park there is a stone with a plaque dedicated to ‘The Barnbow Lasses’ with the inscription ‘their courage and sacrifice will not be forgotten.’

Report by Peter Palmer

Below is a video of the presentation by Jacki Lawrence