Crimean War Build-up
As part of the preparations for the Crimean War (1854–56), Frederick Abel (later Sir Frederick Abel) was appointed the first War Department Chemist with the aim of investigating the new chemical explosives which were then being developed. He was mostly responsible for bringing Guncotton into safe use and for winning a patent dispute brought by Alfred Nobel against the British Government over the patent rights to Cordite which Abel had jointly developed with Professor James Dewar. A new Chemical Laboratory was built to Abel's requirements; this was numbered Building 20. Abel was also responsible for the technical management of the Royal Gunpowder Factory. He retired from the Royal Arsenal in 1888. 1854 also saw the installation of a Retort house for the Royal Arsenal's Gas Works.
By the time of the Crimean War the Royal Arsenal was one of three Royal munitions Factories; the other two being the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield Lock, and the Royal Gun Powder Factory, Waltham Abbey, Essex. The Royal Arsenal greatly expanded its area eastwards outside its brick boundary wall onto the Plumstead Marshes.
In 1868 twenty workers at the Arsenal formed a food-buying association operating from a house in Plumstead and named it the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society. Over the next 115 years the enterprise grew to half a million members across London and beyond, providing services including funerals, housing, libraries and insurance.
Read more about this topic: Royal Arsenal
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)