A slight question about another one that might be worth a stub at least to start.

The former Volvo factory in Irvine was built on the site of something else.  Now I thought at first a Royal Ordnance factory, but I seem to remember hearing somewhere RO had a site nearer the area later where Hysters was, near the part which is now the Beach Park.

Alternatively, was this an old Army base?  I remember Volvo used to have a military style 'water tower' up until the late 70's/very early 80's.

I don't know where the Volvo factory was, but I can pin down ROF Irvine, which perhaps unsurprisingly, was an explosives ROF, as opposed to propellant:

Flush Bracket G4328: Irvine: N face, NW angle of gate lodge at R.O.F. Irvine.

Other than its existence, I've yet to come up with any meat on the Irvine ROF, no stories, history, or personal recollections. It doesn't even come up in the usual historic records.

There's either nothing/little to be had out there, or I'm doing it wrong Usually something crops up, but the most interesting find I have ever made on this one is a memorial to workers at "the factory", and even that is unspecified, and only assumed to have been the ROF at Irvine.

----
Didn't mean to suggest Inverkip wasn't worth a page, just that it wouldn't have anything new to offer. I always like to think our pages have something a little extra.

Remarkably, I have a "cousin" who I think spent most of his working life as an engineer at Inverkip. I've always thought he did well, working "hard" there, and able to afford to live in a nice house with a reasonably large family in Inverkip, little more than a well-paid and skilled caretaker. Some folk have all the luck.

We won't be getting any stories from that quarter - if the number of times I'd met him were fingers on one hand... I'd have problems typing, let alone writing!

I stand to be corrected by JF, but as far as I remember the Volvo factory is at (:gma-point lat=55.6381706 lon=-4.6726227 :)
(:mlat:55.6381706:)(:mlon:-4.6726227:)(:mngr6:NS318415:)

I think this accounts for the big V on the neighbouring roundabout.

Again I stand to be corrected by JF, but I seem to recall that in the 1950s there was a large stone gateway here.  It might have been for an entrance to the Eglinton Estate however.

I'll try and come up with an "Halifax" moment when I do the page on Kip power Station.

Quoted from The Fox

I stand to be corrected by JF, but as far as I remember the Volvo factory is at (:gma-point lat=55.6381706 lon=-4.6726227 :)
(:mlat:55.6381706:)(:mlon:-4.6726227:)(:mngr6:NS318415:)

I think this accounts for the big V on the neighbouring roundabout.

Again I stand to be corrected by JF, but I seem to recall that in the 1950s there was a large stone gateway here.  It might have been for an entrance to the Eglinton Estate however.

I'll try and come up with an "Halifax" moment when I do the page on Kip power Station.

Your coordinates aren't showing up correctly, but the Volvo factory has got some large white sheds nearby, and there's an area south of them that seems to be recently demolished which IIRC was the older sheds.  I didn't even know those olders ones had been levelled.

You're on with the gatehouse, there was a gatehouse at Volvo which was basically boarded up and not used, if I remember the actual gatehouses themselves were only there, not the 'span' between them.  There is a similiar intact pair in Girdle Toll however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stanecastlegatehouse.JPG

According to Wiki's article on Eglinton Country Park, the ones at Volvo were called the Redburn Gate.

Duh!

One day The Fox will notice the little "Disable Smilies" checkbox at the bottom of the message box, and tick it when he's posting references from our lat/lon finder

Unfortunately the interpretation of the : followed by the ) as a face is automatic, so you have to remember to hit the checkbox to disable them yourself.

However, the number are still valid, so the lat/lon and ngr can still be used freely.

Nice gate into the Eglinton Estate - when I used to work at Robert Wilson's, the factory was accessed from a gate on the road that arrives from Kilwinning. When I went back a few years ago I was thwarted as they had not only shut the factory, they had done away with the gate as well! And the bit of access road behind it.

As I had never arrived by any other route, it took me ages to skirt around the outside of the estate and find the more conventional entrance that the rest of the world had always been using.

What the Halifax business?

Halifax gives you eXtra?????????

There is/was a recollection about a girl from Paisley (I think) who went to work filling shells with explosive at Irvine during the war but as I recall it did seem to refer to Ardeer rather than the supposed site of the ROF south of the Magnum Cnetre.   I think it was on the BBC site but it is years since I read it.

I would have thought filling shells would have been an ROF task rather than that of an explosives manufacturer.

Definitely a ROF task. I'd suggest the passage of time might have confused the memory/location.

Filling shells needs a completely different set of hazardous processes, and I can't see the wartime ministries concerned allowing the two to exist on the same site.

There's might be a question of logistics (I think), with the need to keep the explosives factory supplied and remove the product, and the same for the ROF, with empty shells arriving, and filled shells leaving. Having those two movements at the same spot would have been a nightmare with three shifts running night and day, which I presume they did. A breakdown in the single supply route would bring both to a halt (quicker than a simple lack of supplies). Yes, I know, I'm just speculating again

It would be interesting to find the route for the explosive from Ardeer to Irvine.

I've only managed to dig up one ROF Irvine specific story in the BBC's site, and that was one chap's recollection of his posting there, and the other factories he was moved to afterwards, so other than confirming the existence of the place, it didn't actually contribute any sort of local detail, so not much use as a reference.

Okay, I've found out what's what.

Apparently there was a Royal Ordnance factory in Irvine, down near where Hysters was later operational.

What became the Volvo factory on the Crow Woods area was a Royal Army Service Corps depot.  This was basically a large storehouse of obsolete vehicles before being moved to Bowhouse in Kilmarnock, where the prison is now.

Now that is ringing bells.  There was a large army camp at Hurlford where they used to hold regular army surplus sales mainly of vehicles but also stores.  I am talking early 60s here.  I went to a sale once.  As I recall it, the place seemed to have been very old, possibly Victorian.

This might help

http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/pls/portal/newcanmore.newcandig_details_gis?inumlink=111621

There's also some images there which might jog your memory.

Been there mate - see new page added.

Hello.

I found this site while looking for information about Operation Rattle / HMS Warren in Largs... I might have some things to add about that, but for now, I can add my tuppenceworth to this ROF Irvine thread.

Being local, I asked faither about it, and he confirmed that the ROF was indeed on the site of the current Nacco (ex-Hysters) factory site. Also, my late aunt actually worked there. The entrance was roughly at the following co-ordinates.........

55°36'8.51"N
  4°40'25.02"W

He explained how during the war period, there was no bridge over the railway on Heatherhouse Road, as there is now, but a level-crossing. The entrance t the ROF was just over this crossing, and slightly to the left.
He can't remember how big the site was, but he know for a fact that the rubble that the small BMX track just off Marine Drive (NOT the moto-X track) is built on / with is from the demolished ROF factory buildings.

I was also told that the buildings cornered by Heatherhouse Road, and Third Ave. are connected with the ROF......the two 2-story houses were management accomodation, and the flat-roofed building beside them the "recreation centre".

Further, he also knew about the army vehicles depot based at Eglinton Park. He explained how there was the original "Long Drive" that ran thro' the park, from the still-existant gate at Stanecastle, all the way over to the Kilwinning Road. He remembers the army depot being just off that drive.....  In fact, if you look at something like Google Earth, you can actually see a very faint line that runs from the Stanecastle Gate towards the Kilwinning Road.....it lines up EXACTLY with the South-Western boundary of the Volvo truck site.

There's also some kind of huge military "funny" still lying in the Park itself.....looks like some kind of wire-barricade removing device / plough. Located.......

  55°38'34.28"N
  4°39'15.86"W

I sent some photos of it down to the Tank Museum in Bovington,and the archives curator has sent them on to some Bod. in Edinburgh to try get it identified. If nothing else, might find out more about the RASC depot....

Hope that's of some interest to you.