After much planning and a few false starts, the Director General of the Imperial War Museum Diane Lees visited the Chetwynd Station site recently. This was the first time Diane has visited the site and she was most impressed and excited to be shown around. Her obvious focus was the heritage assets that lay within the grounds. So, the ww1 infirmary, ww1 shell store, ww1 office block, the officers mess, that actually predates the shell filling factory and finally Williams barracks, that sits upon the site of the former ww1 press house.
She was escorted by the OC and members of the DIO. She thoroughly enjoyed her visit. We were fortunate to have a personal audience with Diane after the visit where she shared her views and thoughts and discussed our ambitions for the site. She gave us some really good pointers and ideas to move forward with and the promise of further support from the IWM once we are in the position of being able realise some of our plans regarding some sort of museum. She really liked our idea of a new community building that could include heritage spaces that would relate to the site’s impressive history.
One of her ideas that we’d like to share, is the possibility of recording peoples experiences of working at, or around the ww1 shell filling factory no6 and beyond through ww2 where it was reincarnated as the central stores depot that supplied the country in the second global conflict. This of course could include post war as well. If we can then save the experiences for future generations to read or listen to it would be a great source of local history relating to the “Chilwell Depot” story.
We have already received a really interesting story about the 1918 explosion, so if you would like to contribute please contact us via the Contact Us page.
Best Regards, Steve Brown the Community Development Team