ROF Ranskill

The Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) Ranskill was a UK Ministry of Supply, World War II, Explosive ROF. It was located adjacent to what is now known as the East Coast Main Line railway at Ranskill, Nottinghamshire, just north of the town of Retford.

Additional recommended knowledge

How to ensure accurate weighing results every day?

Essential Laboratory Skills Guide

Weighing the right way

Its construction was approved in 1940 and it was built, with the Ministry of Works acting as Agents, as an almost self-contained, explosive factory producing Cordite, with its own acids plant. It was the last Cordite-producing ROF to be built in the UK in World War II and was the smallest of the three Cordite ROFs. It was connected to the railway line, with its own private sidings.

Cordite production first started in March 1942 and the site took 18 months to reach maximum production. It employed, at maximum production, some 4,000 people.

It ceased production in 1945, at the end of World War II, but was retained by the ROF organisation until 1975 on a care and maintenance basis, firstly under the administration of ROF Bishopton and in the latter years by ROF Bridgwater. Cocroft notes that an RDX plant was installed there sometime in the 1950s. The production plant at ROF Ranskill was broken up from 1975 with useful spares for (presumably) the RDX plant being sent to ROF Bridgwater before the site was handed over to what was to later to become the Defence Estates for disposal.

The site has been "landscaped" with very few buildings surviving; and has been used as a waste disposal site for some time.

See also

• Cocroft, Wayne (2000). "Dangerous Energy. The archaeology of gunpowder and military explosives manufacture". Swindon: English Heritage. ISBN 978-1-85074-718-5.