Lords Bridge was once a railway station on the line from Cambridge to Bedford. This has long since closed and been removed. The station house remains and next to it is something quite unusual. It looks interesting from a distance, but the real interest is not so easy to see as the huge radio telescopes of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory which now dominate the site. Amongst these buildings remains a number of relics from WW2. There are bomb store revetments and other traces, but next to them is a more unpleasant remainder. The buildings are in good order and belong to the University of Cambridge and are in use today. Across the road is a small site also once used for gas bomb storage, now used by a firework company for testing their products. The real fireworks took place at the mustard gas filling plant in 1955 however. The type of mustard stored here was dissolved in benzene and was in two huge lead lined concrete tanks underground. Each contained up to 250 tons. A workman using an acetylene torch somehow managed to cause an explosion and one of the tanks was opened to the air and the mustard mixture burned furiously. It was sheer luck and the bravery of one of the persons on the site which helped to avoid a tragedy that day. It was probably this disaster which spurred the authorities on to destroy all the mustard stocks. It was to be many years before all the tanks were removed and some sites are still not fully cleared however.

A brief run down of the FFD site. Construction begain in March 1943, under the code name "Bridge". The site was completed in April 1944 for a total cost of £102,000. Two underground concrete tanks coded J and K were in place each able to hold 250 tons of the two main types of mustard agent, Runcol HT/Y3 and HBD/Y25. The main work of the site was to fill the 65 pound LC (light case) bombs. When the mustard stocks were removed and destroyed from the wartime depots, Lords Bridge was also cleared. In December 1954 the process began. On the 8th December 1954 the first train arrived to take away liquid mustard. This train left in mid January 1955. At this time another team arrived to remove the technical equipment from the site and to prepare to remove the mustard from K tank. This work involved the use of oxy-acetylene cutting equipment. At 09.55 on the 11th January, There was an explosion and fire in K tank, which contained 130 tons of Y25. The fire was immediately tackled and was extinguished by 10.20hrs. 20 tons of the mustard had been lost and the concrete tank lid was blown off and broken. The remaining mustard was covered in foam and was eventualy transfered to J tank. A train loaded with 25 tanks of mustard left the site for the FFD at Norton Disney (Swinderby) on 27th January 1955. The pots were not removed until the 1980's.


Extract of the site plan for Lords bridge. Forward Filling depot 4 marked A. HE store shown here marked B.


General plan of FFD, similar to Lords Bridge. Others such as Barnham were of the same general plan, with minor variations.


Aerial photo of the site, showing the actual buildings remaining in 1998. Very similar to the plan and they can easily identified from that.


Entrance to the general bomb store, buildings still in use today by their present owners.


The revetments for one of the HE stores and its loop roads survive clearly visible. The rail connections to the parts of this site have long since been removed.




A view of the Forward Filling depot. The buildings are marked on the above plan. The light coloured large building to the left was the bomb case store. On the right, the filled bomb store. In between, too low to see here, the filling plant. See Barnham page for a view of this sort of building. Behind, surrounded by bushes, where the tanks were underground.




Taking this road round the back leads to the rear gate to the compound, where the tanks or pots were removed about ten years ago.



A few shots of inside, before the buildings were re-clad. The covered ways from the central filling building remain. The filling building has lost its roof mounted water supply tank though.







Norton Disney

In January 2004 3 Subterranea Brtannica members visited the former FFD and bomb store at Norton Disney (Swinderby) to see what remained of the buildings on the site. Until recently a number of the buildings had remained, as at Lords Bridge, but they are now demolished. The HE bomb stores remain in fair condition with their revetments mainly intact and only the railway lines and overhead gantries removed. These few pictures show a selection of the remains.


As at all the other FFD's the underground storage tanks have been emptied and destroyed here. This shot shows the circular depression where one of the tanks was, and when it was filled in the earth has subsided a little.


Most of the buildings are now simply piles of rubble. Some have been more neatly levelled, and none are standing now.


The loading bay is stil easily found though.


This fibreglass insulated pipe still in place next to the remains of a pump house.


The original gates still hanging, although the fence has gone.


metal items recovered during site clearance. Some are recognisable gas bomb components.

The HE stores are a few hundred yards away, and in fair condition. The rail connection is gone, but the revetments remain.


The store areas were square, with two staggered entrances. Between each bank of three, or as here two, were a pair of rail lines also seperated by an earth bank.


The two explorers here give an idea of scale. They are walking along the old rail track bed, to the right two stores to the left a bank, then another rail line and two more stores. There was a road around the whole site. See the map above!