ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORY 59 (Filling Factory 8)
Opened: Spring 1941
Size: 867 acres
Employed: 17,000, mainly women, round-the-clock. They came from all over south Durham and the Tees Valley in buses and trains – two new stations, Simpasture and Demons Bridge, were opened on the former Clarence Railway
Nickname: Given to the workers by turncoat broadcaster Lord Haw-Haw, who said: “The little angels of Aycliffe will not get away with it.”
Deaths: No one knows how many women were killed at Aycliffe: it must have been scores with hundreds injured and thousands suffering the after-effects of working with chemicals.
Visits: Gracie Fields and Wilfred Pickles were among the stars who visited; Winston Churchill also came in May 1942
Closed: mid-1945, and immediately converted into an industrial estate

BEFORE the Second World War broke out, Aycliffe Village was a fairly quiet, rural place. It had the Great North Road running through it, and there were a couple of water-powered mills on the Skerne, but it was surrounded by miles and miles of boggy farmland.

War changed all that. Suddenly, the village acquired a huge, industrial neighbour: Royal Ordnance Factory 59, employing 17,000 people. One of the reasons the Ministry of Defence chose the 867 acres of boggy land to site the factory was that it was regularly shrouded in mist that would baffle the enemy’s bombers.

For Joyce Bateman, life also changed immeasurably – but she had to straddle the old and the new. Even though she was just ten in 1939, she had to do the work on the family smallholding that her mother Mary was unable to because she had been drafted into the factory to work with the police as a searcher on the main gates.

“We had a smallholding with pigs, hens and even an apiary, so we always had plenty of honey, eggs, pork and bacon – on the quiet, of course,” remembers Joyce, who now lives in Richmond. “Once a week, I had to scrub the big bench in the back yard – it had to be kept spotless as this was where we chopped up the pork, skinned rabbits and hares and plucked pheasants. It was used frequently, as rationing made us cheats and sneaks.”

Joyce’s father, Charles, continued to run the farm, which was at Heworth, but Joyce did all the chores.

“There was no electricity, just oil lamps, no gas, no running water,” she says. “The spring water was collected from a pump a good way from the house – or maybe it seemed a long way to a young lass after she’d carried a few bucketfuls. In winter, the pump would freeze so I had to boil rainwater from another pump to thaw the big one out.

“The chores altered from week to week, from peeling pickling onions to shredding red cabbage or vegs for piccalilli. I helped to bottle fruit and make jams and preserves of all kinds. I had to pick gooseberries, red and black currants, raspberries, even rhubarb. Everything we grew was utilised, but oh did my fingers get sore and my arms scratched from climbing the apple trees.”

Once-a-month, Joyce had to stand on a table and polish the oak beams in the house with wash leather, vinegar and water, but her most exhausting task was to carry the wireless battery two miles to a garage and collect the charged one to bring home.

“We had an Anderson shelter in the garden where we would congregate at night when the sirens went, which was often as they were trying to bomb the factory,” she says. “I was pushed onto a small bunk with the air vent near my head. Our neighbours and my mam and dad all smoked – I had constant sore eyes.

“I once complained of toothache. Half-a-crown was pushed into my hand and I was sent to the village dentist who had just lost his son in the navy, and he was drunk. I can still feel the instrument of his trade rattling against my teeth because he was so drunk he couldn’t do anything, so he gave me my money back and sent me home.

“My mam put vinegar, pepper and brown paper on my cheek and sent me to bed – I forgot about the toothache because my cheek was on fire.”

When she was 14, Joyce joined her mother, Mary, at the factory. Whereas Mary helped searched workers bags to ensure nothing illegal was taken in to the extremely dangerous works, Joyce was employed in administration.

“Without any permission from my family, they tested creams and powders on me,” she recalls. “These were to help the poor souls making ammunition. Their faces became spotty or they went bright yellow from the cordite – although that was better than some who lost fingers, hands and parts of their faces from explosions in the factory.”

Joyce was only at the factory for a year before peace came along. “I remember my friend Clarice Johnson and a few others dancing five miles home on the night of the ceasefire,” she says. “We joined in every street party from Darlington to Aycliffe and the heels of my shoes were no more by the time I got home.

“I walked into the house and saw man and dad all smiles and tears. My dad put his arm round me and said: ‘It’s nearly all over pet.’ Then, going to mam, he sang: ‘Dear little girl have I made you cry?’, and then he held her close. She had a beautiful smile on her face but tears in her eyes.

“Dad gave her a glass of whisky. Mam didn’t drink but she drank it straight down in one. A few minutes later, I had to get her to bed. Trying to get her into bed was almost impossible. She was giggling and her feet were slipping on my polished floor, and getting that boned monstrosity off – her corset – was the hardest task of the whole war!”

JOYCE got in touch following the recent articles about aspects of Aycliffe’s history, many of which have touched on the munitions factory. Her family lived at Heworth, which is slightly to the north of Aycliffe Village.

There was a medieval village at Heworth, perhaps dating from AD900-1100, which has long since been lost. In fact, Aycliffe Village is surrounded by lost medieval villages. Slightly east of Heworth is the site of Preston – which is said to be one of the best preserved of County Durham’s 114 lost medieval villages – and then east again are High Grindon and Elstob.

To the south of Aycliffe Village is the site of the lost settlement of Coatham Mundeville.