Incorporating Mill

These mills, built in 1861, were the prototype for the line of gunpowder incorporating mills that stretches along Queens Mead.  Each unit of this Grade 1 listed building was T-shaped with originally two, and later three, mills on either side of a central engine house.

There was a boiler room at the rear, a chimney (now demolished) and a coal yard. The engine house contained a steam-powered beam engine which drove the edge runners in all six bays of each individual incorporating mill.

Gunpowder ingredients after being blended in the mixing house were placed in the pan of the incorporating mills. The large steel wheels (edge runners) would then run over the mixture for hours until the ‘green charge’ had turned to a ‘mill cake’. Shortly before World War I, the building was altered to produce cordite, when the workforce increased to about 5,000 (with over half being women).

The Incorporating Mill was again converted after the Second World War, this time into offices and research areas under the various Ministry of Defence establishments, which operated until the site closure in 1991. Since 2001, visitors have been able to see the drive shaft, in one of the mill bays that once operated the mills from the beam engine. Another bay houses a full size replica of Gunpowder Press.