The History of Ruddington Depot
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Building The Depot
The construction is completed
The original plans were modified as construction proceeded. The hostel to accommodate 2000 people was not built. Instead a small wooden building to house only 30 people was erected.
About 200 buildings of different sizes and made of a variety of materials were built in 18 months. Roads and paths were laid out and a branch line to Ruddington railway station was constructed, with passenger platforms and a large loading bay. Joyce Gresham was among a group of land girls employed to landscape the area.
Joyce Gresham [née Carroll] was 21 years old when she came to the site on the 9th of March 1941 with a group of a 100 land girls. They joined the 4,000 men, of all nationalities, already there working on the final stages of the Depot. There were some women employed already in the site office and canteen and as fire fighters, but there were few facilities for them. The girls often had a long way to go across the site to go to the toilets, and had to go in pairs.
The land girls were there to prepare the blast banks and grass areas between the buildings for sowing the grass seed. As the paths and roads were not yet completed they were set to work navvying instead. They spread red shale on the roads using only dumper trucks and hand tools.
Soon this was done and they started work on the blast banks, hoeing and raking the topsoil and sowing the grass seed. The landscaping and planting went on until August and as the weather grew warmer, swarms of insects emerged. Anyone who was bitten had to go to the first aid post where the bite was washed with T.C.P., which was then new and unfamiliar. Even today when Joyce smells it, she remembers her time as a land girl in Ruddington.
Her journey to work started at 7.00 a.m. when she left her home in Colwick and travelled by bus to the Victoria Station in Nottingham to catch the 7.30 a.m. train to Ruddington. The work was arduous and the days long, but there was good companionship and lasting friendships were formed. Mrs. Gresham’s best friend, Mary Pinkstone [nee Green] worked with her in Ruddington and later, when she married, became her bridesmaid. They are still in touch over 50 years later.
Meanwhile the Sewage Works in Pasture Lane were extended and modernised to accommodate the effluent from the site, which was expected to be considerable. Records of the cost of the entire project seem to have been lost, but similar Depots of about the same size built elsewhere cost between £3 million and £5 million at 1940 prices. The Ruddington Depot probably cost a similar amount. The construction of the Depot was finally completed when Asher Lane was extended to Field Farm and around the perimeter fence to the Loughborough Road. Jack Bagguley was one of the first pedestrians to use it on his way to work on the farm on a Sunday morning:
“This concrete road was finished in March, 1941. One Saturday night, I called in the White Horse and met my Mother and Dad. It was the most beautiful moonlit night you had ever seen. You could stand and read a paper out there. Next day we had to go up to the farm to feed all the beasts and when my Dad opened the back door, 5 foot of snow fell in the kitchen. There was 14 inches of snow when we went up that road to the farm and yet when we went in at 10 ‘o’ clock when the pubs shut the night before, it was as clear as a bell. Absolutely ……..we couldn’t believe it.”
Despite the weather, the first employees arrived the next day.
The Story > Chapter 2 > Section 2.06