Chittening | |
---|---|
Location within Bristol | |
OS grid reference | ST532813 |
Unitary authority | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | BRISTOL |
Postcode district | BS11 |
Dialling code | 0117 |
Police | Avon and Somerset |
Fire | Avon |
Ambulance | South Western |
UK Parliament | |
Chittening is an industrial estate in Avonmouth, Bristol, England, bypassed by the A403 road, near the River Severn. It lies within the city boundary of Bristol, in Avonmouth ward, but used to be beyond it, in historic Gloucestershire, on former marshland at the southern end of the Vale of Berkeley.
Chittening was once a farm, first recorded in 1658 and 1702 as Chitnend. The name is from chitten end(e), from Middle English or Early Modern English chitte 'young of an animal; brat, child' + end(e) 'end [of a parish or estate]'. [1] Chittening was in the ancient parish of Henbury in Gloucestershire. It was added to Bristol in the early 20th century.
There was a medieval Chapel on the site which stood until 1918. It had been in domestic use since 1845.[ citation needed ]
During World War I, the Ministry of Munitions built a filling factory for artillery shells on the site, which was farmland commandeered by the military for its closeness to Avonmouth docks and to the site of the National Spelter Company's chemical works (Spelter being zinc or a zinc alloy) in St Andrew's Road, Avonmouth, later the National Smelting Company. At Chittening, Nobel Explosives filled shells with chloropicrin, derived industrially from picric acid. In defiance of the Hague Convention on weapons, the German army used mustard gas (dichloroethyl sulphide) against Allied troops on the Eastern and Western Fronts in 1917, and the British minister of munitions, Winston Churchill, ordered supplies to be manufactured in Britain for use in retaliation. Having first used captured German gas in late 1917, and then gas produced at factories in Manchester and Runcorn, from June 1918 three filling factories, at Banbury, ROF Rotherwas at Hereford, and Chittening, were supplied with freshly manufactured mustard gas by the National Smelting Company. [2] By November 1918, with unskilled female labour, Chittening had produced 85,424 mustard gas shells, but at a human cost of 1213 notified cases of associated illness, including at least two deaths which were later attributed to influenza. [3] The story of the women who filled the shells at such great personal risk has been told in the stage play Gas Girls. [4] [5] [6] [7] Rather late in the day, a small hospital and surgery were opened on the site around the time of the Armistice. [8] [9]
One building survives from the World War I factory: the headquarters of Brandon Lifting at 7 Worthy Road. There is also the shell of a despatch shed, and the stub of a railway line that once entered the works complex. The original internal railway system of the smelting works (separate from the filling factory) was operated by two-foot gauge four-wheel battery-driven locomotives built for the Ministry of Munitions by the forerunner of Brush Traction of Loughborough. Two of them, maker's numbers 16302 and 16307, still exist. At the end of the war three, including these two, were acquired by the General Estates Company Ltd as surplus to wartime requirements and then sold in 1922 to the Hythe Pier Railway in Hampshire, where they were converted from battery-driven operation to a third-rail electric system operating at 250 volts.
The present industrial estate (or "trading estate") developed mainly after World War II, under the management of the Port of Bristol Authority. In 1951 a factory producing carbon black was built to the north-east of the estate (Philblack, later Sevalco), and operated until 2008 when its closure was announced. [10] The site has since been cleared with the exception of three storage tanks.
The estate is now organised around a structure of named roads: the spine, Worthy Road, and the peripheral Greensplott Road and Bank Road, all named after farms whose land disappeared under the industrial development.
A selection of the current businesses operating from the site can be viewed online. [11] They include specialists in transport and logistics, plant and vehicle hire, lifting gear, pallet distribution, sectional buildings, industrial cleaning, damp control and vehicle repairs.
Between 1917 and 1964, the Chittening site was served by Chittening Platform railway station on the Henbury Loop connecting Avonmouth with Filton Junction. It is now served by St Andrews Road railway station in Avonmouth Docks, a mile and a half or so to the south. The closure of the earlier platform was immortalised in the song "Slow Train" on an album released in 1964 by Flanders and Swann.
Chittening Warth is an area of salt marsh beside the Severn Estuary, just beyond the sea-bank to the west of the industrial estate; warth is a local word for land periodically overflowed by the tide. At low tide the mudflats there are visited by large numbers of birds, including dunlin, Eurasian curlew, Eurasian oystercatcher, common redshank and whimbrel. In some winters there are large populations of field voles, which attract short-eared owls. [12] A catalogue of sightings is maintained by the Severnside 200 Club. [13]
The A403 is a main road linking Bristol with the Severn Estuary. It runs from junction 1 of the M48 at Aust to the docks at Avonmouth. After the Severn Bridge was opened in 1966, the A403 was constructed in 1969 and 1970 to provide a direct route between the M4 motorway and Avonmouth. It is an important route for the local industries, allowing easy access between Wales and this part of England. It was financed by Gloucestershire County Council with a £387,000 grant from the Ministry of Transport and was initially known as the Avonmouth Aust Coast Road.
Avonmouth is a port and outer suburb of Bristol, England, facing two rivers: the reinforced north bank of the final stage of the Avon which rises at sources in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset; and the eastern shore of the Severn Estuary. Strategically the area has been and remains an important part of the region's maritime economy particularly for larger vessels for the unloading and exporting of heavier goods as well as in industry including warehousing, light industry, electrical power and sanitation. The area contains a junction of and is connected to the south by the M5 motorway and other roads, railway tracks and paths to the north, south-east and east.
The Severn Beach line is a local railway line in Bristol and Gloucestershire, England, which runs from Bristol Temple Meads to Severn Beach, and used to extend to Pilning. The first sections of the line were opened in 1863 as part of the Bristol Port Railway and Pier; the section through Bristol was opened in 1875 as the Clifton Extension Railway.
Patchway railway station is on the South Wales Main Line, serving the town of Patchway and village of Stoke Gifford in South Gloucestershire, England. It is 6 miles (10 km) from Bristol Temple Meads. Its three letter station code is PWY. It is managed by Great Western Railway, who provide all train services at the station; there is generally a train every hour in each direction between Cardiff Central and Taunton.
The Avonmouth Docks are part of the Port of Bristol, in England. They are situated on the northern side of the mouth of the River Avon, opposite the Royal Portbury Dock on the southern side, where the river joins the Severn estuary, within Avonmouth.
RAF Credenhill, also known as RAF Hereford, was a non-flying station of the Royal Air Force situated in the village of Credenhill near Hereford, England, United Kingdom. It was commissioned in 1940 and served as home for a range of training schools from 1940 until closure in 1994. The site was subsequently obtained by the British Army.
Montpelier railway station is on the Severn Beach Line and serves the district of Montpelier in Bristol, England. It is 2.85 miles (4.59 km) from Bristol Temple Meads. Its three letter station code is MTP. The station has a single platform, serving trains in both directions. As of 2015 it is managed by Great Western Railway, which is the third franchise to be responsible for the station since privatisation in 1997. They provide all train services at the station, mainly a train every 30 minutes in each direction.
Redland railway station is on the Severn Beach Line and serves the districts of Cotham and Redland in Bristol, England. It is 3.3 miles (5.3 km) from Bristol Temple Meads. Its three letter station code is RDA. As of 2015 it is managed by Great Western Railway, which is the third franchise to be responsible for the station since privatisation in 1997. They provide all train services at the station, mainly a train every 30 minutes in each direction.
Shirehampton railway station is on the Severn Beach Line and serves the district of Shirehampton in Bristol, England. It is 7.6 miles (12.2 km) from Bristol Temple Meads. Its three letter station code is SHH. The station has a single platform which serves trains in both directions. As of 2015 it is managed by Great Western Railway, which is the third franchise to be responsible for the station since privatisation in 1997. They provide all train services at the station, mainly a train every 30 minutes in each direction.
Chittening Platform railway station was a station on the former Great Western Railway between Filton and Avonmouth.
The Henbury Loop Line, also known as the Filton to Avonmouth Line, is a railway line following the boundary between Bristol and South Gloucestershire between the Severn Beach Line at Hallen Marsh Junction, Avonmouth and the Cross Country Route/South Wales Main Line at Filton. It is currently only used for freight.
Kingsweston was a ward of the city of Bristol. The three districts in the ward were Coombe Dingle, Lawrence Weston and Sea Mills. The ward takes its name from the old district of Kings Weston, now generally considered part of Lawrence Weston. Following a Local Government Boundary Commission review in 2015 ward boundaries were redrawn and Kingsweston ward is now split between the Stoke Bishop ward and the Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston ward.
Seabank Power Station is a 1,140 MW gas-fired power station at Hallen Marsh in Bristol, England. It is situated beside the A403 road and Severn Estuary, just north of Avonmouth and south of Severn Beach, close to the boundary with South Gloucestershire. It is next to the former Terra Nitrogen Severnside fertiliser works, which was closed by Growhow UK in January 2008.
North Filton Platform was a railway station which served the northern part of Filton, Gloucestershire, England. It was on the railway line between Filton and Avonmouth, and was situated on the western side of Gloucester Road.
Chemical weapons were widely used by the United Kingdom in World War I. The use of poison gas was suggested by Winston Churchill and others in Mesopotamia during the interwar period, and also considered in World War II, although it appears that they were not actually used in these conflicts. While the UK was a signatory of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which outlawed the use of poison gas shells, the conventions omitted mention of deployment from cylinders.
Bristol Rail Campaign is a Bristol-based campaign group, calling for better rail transport in the Bristol area.
The National Smelting Company was a nationalised zinc smelting company in Avonmouth, England. It was established by Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill to produce mustard gas during World War I.
ROF Rotherwas was a Royal Ordnance Factory filling factory, No 4, located in Rotherwas, Dinedor Parish, Herefordshire, England.
National Filling Factory, Banbury, officially called National Filling Factory No. 9. was a British Ministry of Munitions filling factory, constructed during World War I and located in Banbury, Oxfordshire. The production of filled shells began in April 1916 and ended when the factory closed in 1924
The Avonmouth Light Railway(ALR) was a nominally independent railway company operating a short standard-gauge branch line from a point on what is now the Severn Beach Line near Avonmouth Docks station in Bristol to a Bristol Corporation electricity installation east of the main entrance to Avonmouth Docks. Its promoters had aspirations which were never fulfilled.