Westwood Quarry: Shadow Factory area

Image: © Noel Jenkins Taken: Unknown

This old Bath stone quarry has enjoyed a multitude of other uses from pre-war mushroom farming to a WW2 depository for British Museum art treasures. Part of the quarry was converted into a shadow factory for the manufacture of gun sights by Royal Enfield who remained after the war to manufacture motor cycles until the early 1970's. During 1950/1 scientists from Porton Down carried out the biological warfare "Westwood Trials", spraying aerosols containing live pathogens into the space occupied by the art depository. Allegedly workers in the Royal Enfield factory were unwittingly exposed to the materials. Source: http://www.nr23.net/govt/spray.htm The quarry was still in use as an engineering workshop until the 1990's. Stone is still occasionally extracted but the former secure areas are now used for document storage. The brick pillar in the picture has since collapsed. Access is not possible.

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