National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell

The National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell, was a World War I United Kingdom Government-owned explosives Filling Factory. Its formal title was National Filling Factory No. 6. It was located near Chilwell, at that time a village, in Nottinghamshire on the main road from Nottingham to Ashby de la Zouch. During the Great War it filled high explosives into some 19 million shells.

The factory was created as a result of the Shell Crisis of 1915. At the beginning of World War I shells were filled with Lyddite but this needed imported raw materials and so Trinitrotoluene (TNT) was adopted. TNT was expensive to make and as in short supply so Amatol, a mixture of various proportions of TNT and Ammonium nitrate, was adopted instead.

On 20 August 1915 Godfrey Chetwynd, 8th Viscount Chetwynd was given the task of designing, building and superintending the running of a factory to fill large calibre shells with Amatol. He requisitioned the services of Albert Hall of Ferranti who served as his chief engineer. The Chilwell site was apparently selected as it was close to a railway line from which a siding connection could be constructed, and sheltered from surrounding areas by hills.

From the start, women were employed. This may have been another reason for the choice of location, as there was a tradition of women working in local textile factories in the nearby towns. Owing to their exposure to the explosives, many women's skin turned yellow, and they were known as the "Chilwell Canaries" or "Canary Girls".

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