On Wednesday 5th October, at 7p.m. Gary Willis (History, University of Bristol) will be presenting a free online talk entitled: ‘Fields Into Factories: Scotland’s Unexplored Second World War‘.
His talk will be based on his nearly-completed PhD thesis, which looks at the impact on the British rural and peri-urban landscape of the network of Royal Ordnance Factories and military aircraft factories that were built by the State in the run-up to and during the Second World War.
These military-industrial sites were constructed very rapidly under conditions of national emergency between 1937 and 1942 – thereby short-circuiting the in any case weak civic planning consultation processes that existed at the time. They produced war materials which by their very nature were dispensable and in the case of ammunition could be used once-only – and by 1945 the vast majority of these sites were no longer required for the purpose for which they were built, leaving a lasting imprint on the British landscape. Further proof, if it was needed, of the wastefulness of the war-making process.
The environmental and historical significance of military-industrial sites – as opposed to say, military airfields – is that the former represented a nearly always exclusive and permanent change in use of the land of the landscapes they occupied – whereas many military airfields shared their sites with agriculture even during the war, and many airfields were transferred back into civil agricultural use at the end of the war.
The impact on the landscape of militarisation is only one side of the story that Gary will explore however. He will also explain how the contours of landscapes, geology, and climate were active agents in influencing the location and form that this militarisation took in Scotland. He will look in particular at the decision-making process for the location of a Royal Ordnance Factory in Scotland which subsequently became ROF Bishopton, near Paisley, west of Glasgow.