In March 1942, the Keighley News could only announce a royal visit to ‘a North-Eastern factory’, but this turned out to be the Royal Ordnance Factory at Steeton, popularly known as The Dump.
Here Queen Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother, is greeted by smiling women war workers.
She toured the factory’s 1,000-seater canteen and two surgeries, and was told how “every soldier’s wife had a holiday when her husband came home on leave”.
Statistics released after the factory’s closure in 1945 revealed 204 million munitions components had been made there, two-thirds of its 4,000 workforce being women, many drafted in as an alternative to conscription into the armed services.
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