The History of Ruddington Depot
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Building The Depot
Baffled amazement and disbelief
After the dramatic declaration of war there was an anti-climax, a complete absence of any military action for almost a year. This ‘phoney war’ ended in August 1940 with the Battle of Britain. As the RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes fought with German aircraft in the sky over southern England, heavy earth-moving machinery arrived in Ruddington. The people living in the village watched in bewilderment and astonishment as the farmland to the south of The Green was abruptly torn apart and destroyed for ever.
Jack Bagguley was horrified. On the land he had ploughed in the spring, the crops had grown well and were almost ready to be harvested:
“There was corn standing this high you know, but it didn’t make any difference, they went straight in, there was no arguing, they just tore into it – and then it was gone. They had big massive cranes behind a big crawler tractor Mowlems did. They could lift anything.
The first thing they did when they started was to put pipes in, twin pipes from Asher Lane, where Gibbies Brook went under the road. The twin pipes went right across and when they got so far across, they branched out so that they drained all the water up into Gibbies Brook and it all flowed down the pipes. Then they filled it in over the top. The lorries came with the red pit slag from old slag heaps up at Manor Farm back of Ilkeston. All around there was tons and tons of it.”
These lorries thundered through the village carrying the colliery waste, which was tipped above the newly completed culvert and all over the low lying areas around Gibson’s Dyke. This raised the surface by about two metres. In December 1940 work began on the cleared and levelled site.
Ken Marriott’s reactions were typical:
“I can remember walking across the fields one day, all these different buildings were going up. I couldn’t believe it. I wondered at the time what it all was. Nobody had said anything about the land being purchased.”
The Story > Chapter 2 > Section 2.03