Southgate, Grovelands Hospital c.1955

Photo ref: S641046

More about this scene

This grandeur is not what one usually associates with hospital treatment. Although there had been some kinds of industry in Enfield in medieval times, for instance the flour mill, Enfield's first real factory did not start its working life until 1816. This was the Royal Small Arms Factory. Its birth was due to the unsatisfactory situation of the previous 100 years, when the governments of the day were mostly supplied with arms from Birmingham, Liege and Hamburg, but these were not of a good enough standard. An ordnance factory was set up in Lewisham, but this too was unsatisfactory. By 1811 the manufacture of ordnance had moved to the powder mill at Waltham Abbey. Here, water from the River Lea was used to power the mill. Major Mulcaster, who had completed a survey of the building, said that the water of the Lea was sufficient for the powder mill, but a factory to make other ordnance should, he suggested, be at a site just south of this.