During WWII an overspill country branch of the Woolwich Arsenal was built at Waterton on the outskirts of Bridgend. The Royal Ordnance Factory, No 53 - known as "The Arsenal & The Admiralty" to locals, was opened in 1938 a year before the outbreak of WWII. It was constructed in two distinct sections, one for storing ammunition (The Arsenal) and the other as a shell-filling factory for the Navy (The Admiralty).

Gwilym Elwyn Lloyd, aged 89 and buried 13th October 2001 is best remembered for his part in the construction and development of the Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) at Bridgend, Glamorgan.

He was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1972 for his dedication to British industry after he painstakingly mapped the site following the Second World War.

His son Graham, from Brackla (Near Bridgend), said:

"My father started off as a miner in Pentrebach, near Methyr Tydfil, when he was 14. He quickly realised that wasn't for him so he moved to London, trained as a carpenter and started work for the original HMV record company making vaneer units. He moved to Bridgend in 1936 and began work on the Arsenal. It had 1,000 buildings and my father knew them all intimately. After the war the Arsenal was demolished and turned into an industrial estate, but because all the top secret documents detailing the land were destroyed, my father was asked to help catalogue where the pipes and foundation lay"

In the 1970s Mr Lloyd, a keen inventor and entrepreneur, developed the Bridgend / Brackla ROF factory site where he patented and developed a set of bellows for inflatable boats. He also became an associate member of the Bath Institute of Medical Engineering after a respirator he had invented saved a young girl's life.

This part of the factory, south of Bridgend town centre, made such a vast quatity of shell casings for the Navy that the site had the nickname of the Admiralty. The completed shells were then transferred to the second part of the site known as The Arsenal" in Brackla (via rail) for filling and storage. During its peak production 40,000 people worked in the two factories making it the largest employee factory that has ever been in Britain! Most of the men in Great Britain would have been in the forces (Army, Navy, RAF), so consequently the vast quantity of this work force would have been women,

This Arsenal factory, north east of Bridgend, received the shell cases from "The Admiralty" factory, filled them with ammuntion and stored them in vast underground chambers. The women in this part of the factory had no rubber gloves to protect them from the cordite and over time their hands got stained a yellow colour which gave them the nickname of "Canaries". Incredulously, some of the women would rub the cordite in their hair to blonde it !!

8x7 was totally demolished.

8x6 & 8x5 still exist, but the iron rings which were used to support the construction were salvaged for scrap sometime after its closure, thus making them extremely unstable. The ground is water-logged shale.

8x4 & 8x3 were converted into SRHQ 8.2 in the 1950's. Later becoming RGHQ 8.2. (Nuclear Bunker)

8x1 & 8x2 were of concrete construction and too small for the SRHQ so they have been untouched. The entrances have been covered, but still exist below ground.