Interesting read:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-36026703 

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Can remember seeing corvettes (or was it a destroyer or two in Port Penrhyn and watching army lorries with Police escort coming down the road from the quarry to Port Penrhyn when they were clearing Glyn Rhonwy out in late 50's or early 60's.

There may well be some hidden nasties up there – remember seeing a picture in the Daily Post (IIRC) some years ago of a tunnel stacked floor to ceiling with rusty bombs – not in the wartime bomb store, in the slate quarry itself, and that was after the supposed clear out…

The Tabun bombs / shells were, I believe, stored sheeted over, on the runway at Llandedr for quite some time after the war before they were shipped off to be dumped at sea. My Uncle Owie used to tell me about the Mustard Gas factory (think it was just a forward filling station for the bombs and shells) that was on the lake shore below the quarry.

Presumably once filled they were taken up to the bomb store but who knows if any were secreted away in some of the holes in the quarry – especially if any were found to be ‘leakers’… (The Mustard Gas having been made at Valley Works, Rhydymywyn near Mold).

There is unexploded ordnance in the flooded Bryn Hall slate quarry east of Bethesda – some of my diving buddies visited in the late 1960’s spotted them on ledges under water before it became the grave of one of them whose body we never recovered…

The Beaufort Dyke deep between Scotland and Northern Ireland is NOT a very healthy place to go diving!! 😮 :ohmygod:

Clive

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When the Forward filling stations were made safe in the 60s quite a bit of stuff was just buried in the belief that it was MOD land and that was safe from disturbance.
By the 90s many sites had to be re-investigated and a lot of active material was found and dealt with. Clean up at the production factories in the late 40s was done by ICI personnel and I believe was done well. When further clean up was done in the 60s I believe that the contractors were much less conscientious with much being just buried.
Rhydymwyn was investigated thoroughly in the 90s and made safe. Randle (Wigg Island) is being buried under 30 - 40 feet of soil and waste, which says something about the state of the ground there!

We found a few of these last time we were there:

🔗74776[linkphoto]74776[/linkphoto][/link]

Thought they were some kind of landmine but God knows....could be anything, or could be just a load of machine parts?? They are in one of the pits that was cleared of dumped munitions in the 60s/70s.

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Ah yes, Wigg Island - where Runcol and Pyro were developed by ICI (Both types of Mustard Gas) before the actual wartime Valley Works was built and serious production started.

There are still pits at Valley (Rhydymywn) that are badly contaminated with off-spec stuff and leaky shells but at least 'they' know where they are and you're kept clear of these areas when you do the tour... Fascinating place, kept secret for 10's of years after WW2. Thoroughly 'orrible the stuff they made there though!

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Most of the development work on the manufacture of Mustard Gas was done at Sutton Oak: A factory, near St. Helens in Lancashire.
Then the production facility with storage and filling was built at Randle / Wigg Island.

The third phase was the storage tunnels at Valley, but production and filling capacity was added as the project expanded.
The "Toxic pits" at Valley have been investigated and cleared, but the ground and site in general is still classed as at risk.
In fact much of the stuff in the pits was buried during early clean up and decommissioning.