page_title: Gunpowder magazine
section_title: In the United Kingdom
hierarchical_section_title: Gunpowder magazine / In the United Kingdom
caption_attribution_description: English: Tilbury Fort, Essex Gunpowder storage magazines at Tilbury Fort.
context_page_description: A gunpowder magazine is a magazine designed to store the explosive gunpowder in wooden barrels for safety. Gunpowder, until superseded, was a universal explosive used in the military and for civil engineering: both applications required storage magazines. Most magazines were purely functional and tended to be in remote and secure locations. They are the successor to the earlier powder towers and powder houses.
context_section_description: Production of gunpowder in England appears to have started in the mid-13th century with the aim of supplying The Crown. Records show that gunpowder was being made in 1346, at the Tower of London; a powder house existed at the Tower in 1461. Gunpowder was also being made or stored at other royal residences such as Greenwich Palace (the reason being that these were where the royal armouries were based). It was also stored in Scotland, in royal castles, such as Edinburgh Castle. Gunpowder manufacture at Faversham began as a private enterprise in the 16th century.
  From the 18th century, efforts began to be made to site magazines away from inhabited areas. Nevertheless, storage at the older established sites persisted well into the 19th century.
  The use of gunpowder for both military and civil engineering purposes began to be superseded by newer nitrogen-based explosives from the later 19th century. Gunpowder production in the United Kingdom was gradually phased out during the mid-20th century. The last remaining gunpowder mill at the Royal Gunpowder Factory, Waltham Abbey was damaged by a German parachute mine in 1941 and it never reopened. This was followed by the closure of the gunpowder section at the Royal Ordnance Factory, ROF Chorley, the section was closed and demolished at the end of World War II, and ICI Nobel's Roslin gunpowder factory which closed in 1954. This left the sole United Kingdom gunpowder factory at ICI Nobel's Ardeer site in North Ayrshire, Scotland; it too closed in October 1976. Since then gunpowder has been imported into the United Kingdom.
  Gunpowder magazines survive at several locations in the UK. It can be seen that, in many cases, the gunpowder was stored in locations which were both remote from habitations and could be made secure. They were also often sited in dense woodland (or had trees planted around them) as a way of lessening the effect of any explosion.
caption: Tilbury: a unique pair of early 18th-century magazines within the Fort
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