Royal Gunpowder Archives

After the closure of ERDE, the archive material inherited passed through a number of hands and storage locations, particularly in the latter period before opening to the public, when outside staff from the firm designing the exhibition had to have free access. Consequently by 2004 the archive had become rather disorganised.

The opportunity has therefore been taken to start a ground up exercise involving a complete check of the holding and the design of computer databases of the material in order to produce a catalogue in due course.

Six elements are involved:

1. The original Waltham Abbey Special Collection of documents and small objects

2. Images

3. Building drawings

4. Non building drawings

5. Maps and plans

6. Library

Data checking and transfer has been a time consuming process. So far Building drawings and Maps and Plans have been completed and a start has been made on the balance.

The ultimate object is to have a fully catalogued updated archive, which will provide the researcher with a complete and accessible historical picture of the Mills and the industry and will provide a resource to draw on for special displays, written articles, family researchers, historical enquirer’s etc.

In connection with the latter, a special project is being undertaken to record on a database the historical detail, which is available on Mills personnel from the time of Government purchase in 1787.

It is hoped that this will eventually be published in the form of a personnel register for study by social historians and so on. Our Volunteers are working hard to catalogue and compile the items in the various Archives.

If you would like to volunteer to work on the Archives as a Volunteer Archivist, please refer to our Volunteer Page for more details and an Application Form.

Archives Questions

If you have a question about the history of the Mills or its former employees, please email your question to the Archives and we will attempt to answer your queries.