The plaque issued by the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers and attached to the wall of the Firepower Museum, one of
the may buildings that formed the Royal Arsenal, reads:
Institution of
Mechanical Engineers
Engineering
Heritage Award
The Royal Arsenal
1671 to
1967
The Royal Arsenal produced much of the armaments
required by this
country during the growth of the
British Empire and through two World
Wars.
Many important mechanical innovations were
developed by the first
Chief Mechanical Engineer,
Sir John Anderson (1814 - 1886), Vice President
of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
2 June 2011
Improving the world
through engineering
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers
website [visit
link] tells us:
"The Royal Arsenal, the weapons
factory that helped build the British Empire and win two World Wars, joined the
ranks of Britain's greatest engineering feats this month when it received the
Institution's 64th Engineering Heritage Award.
Founded in 1671, the Royal Arsenal
designed and engineered the majority of the British army’s weapons and artillery
for nearly 300 years, providing rifles for the Duke of Wellington, artillery for
Lord Kitchener and tanks for General Montgomery.
By the early 20th Century, at the
height of the British Empire, the Arsenal had become one of the largest weapons
factories in the world, employing 80,000 people. It was also one of the most
advanced – notable Royal Arsenal engineers such as Marc Isambard Brunel, Samuel
Bentham and Sir John Anderson put the Arsenal at the very forefront of weapons
research and engineering.
Speaking at the ceremony, John
Wood, Past President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said: “The
Royal Arsenal has made an unrivalled contribution to Britain’s military history.
The British Empire was forged in the furnaces of Woolwich, and we couldn’t have
won two world wars without the world-class engineering that took place
here.”
“This award places the Royal
Arsenal alongside the very greatest engineering feats in the country. With this
award we also want to celebrate the work of Sir John Anderson, the Royal
Arsenal’s first Chief Mechanical Engineer, whose innovations helped shape 19th
century warfare.”
Sir John Anderson was one of the
most important, yet most overlooked, engineers to have worked at the Royal
Arsenal. Sir John was the first to gain the title of Chief Mechanical Engineer
at the Arsenal in the mid-19th century, and he would later become Vice President
of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1868.
Sir John’s impact on the Royal
Arsenal, and on British warfare, was remarkable. He oversaw the complete
mechanisation of the factories and the laboratory, often designing the machinery
himself. After his modernising process was complete, a part which once took a
day to produce would take just half an hour. He also invented processes to
mass-produce bullets, bayonets and muskets, feeding the huge demand coming from
the Empire. He saved one of his most spectacular achievements for the Crimean
War, when he turned a 600ft ship into a huge floating factory, ready to supply
the men fighting the Russians.
Yet, despite Sir John Anderson’s
enormous significance, his name is nowhere to be found in the history books. The
Institution’s inscription of the great man’s name on the permanent Heritage
Award will go some way to redress that imbalance. Descendants of Sir John, young
and old, were present for the plaque unveiling.
Today the site’s heritage is
remembered in Firepower, the Royal Artillery Museum. A museum has been open to
the public since 1820, making it the oldest military museum in Britain. It is
also home to Berkeley Homes’ Royal Arsenal development, one of the largest
regeneration projects in the UK, with over 5,000 homes due to be built on the
historic site.
The award plaque was presented to
Sir Sidney Bacon, the last Head of the Royal Ordnance Factories before it closed
in 1967. Eileen Noon, Chief Operating Officer of the Firepower Royal Artillery
Museum, John Anderson, Chairman of Berkeley Homes (Urban Renaissance) and
Councillor Jim Gillman, Mayor of Greenwich, were also present to accept the
award."