RNAD Broughton Moor is a decommissioned Royal Naval Armaments Depot located between Great Broughton and Broughton Moor in the County of Cumbria, England.
History
Aerial view
The depot was opened in 1939 on the site of Buckhill Colliery (opened 1873, closed 1932; the colliery’s spoil heap remains a prominent feature of the site to this day). In 1944 the site was expanded from 800 to 1050 acres.
The depot continued to be used by the Ministry of Defence until 1963, at which point it was leased to the Federal Republic of Germany. From 1977 it was used by the United States Navy for storage of armaments for its North Atlantic Squadron (the weapons were flown out of the site by helicopters shuttling back and forth over a number of days to a USN Cargo Ship lying offshore and away from the town’s harbour of Workington); and from 1981 Broughton Moor was formally adopted as a NATO storage site.
The site was decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, finally closing on 31 December 1992.
An explosion occurred at RNAD Broughton Moor on 18 January 1944 which resulted in the death of 11 people and left 70 people injured. The coroners hearing was reported in the Cumberland Evening Star in February 1944. The explosion appears to have occurred in one of the traverse laboratories, photos showing the aftermath include a 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) gauge box van No. 267
The large majority of the buildings and bunkers remain along with underground storage and an extensive network of storage sheds and other military buildings. Ownership of the site was transferred from the Ministry of Defence to Allerdale Borough Council in 2008 who have yet to decide what to do with the site. The site was purchased by the Borough Council for £1. In October 2008 Cumbria County Council called for interest in the redevelopment of the site rebranded as Derwent Forest. As yet there has been little interest due to the huge cost involved with cleaning up the site. There are unexploded ordnance and large amounts of asbestos as well as unmarked mine shafts when it was a colliery prior to World War II. Furthermore, having previously ruled out allowing the site to be used for coal mining, Allerdale council later agreed to allow mining by any prospective future owners as a way to raise funding for any potential tourism development.
