page_title: Branston, Staffordshire
section_title: Branston Pickle and Branston Depot
hierarchical_section_title: Branston, Staffordshire / Branston Pickle and Branston Depot
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of the Office Block, Branston Depot, Staffordshire, England
context_page_description: Branston is a village and civil parish in Staffordshire, England. At the 2001 census, the population was 6,540, increasing to 6,749 at the 2011 Census.
context_section_description: In 1917 the government chose Branston as the location for a new National Machine Gun Factory (the location was chosen among other reasons because it was beyond the range of enemy aircraft). The factory was not completed, however, till after Armistice Day; it was equipped with machinery from the USA, but was never used for manufacturing weapons (though around a thousand guns were reconditioned there in 1919). The following year it was decided to sell the entire site.
  Crosse & Blackwell made a successful £612,856 bid to acquire the factory site, which they pledged to turn into the largest and best equipped food preserving plant in the British Empire. This allowed the company to vacate its Soho properties in London. In 1922 they started to produce Branston Pickle (to a recipe attributed to Mrs Caroline Graham and her daughters Evelyn and Ermentrude) at the new factory, but this factory proved uneconomic and production was moved to another company site in London, in Crimscott Street, Bermondsey. Production at Branston ended in January 1925, leading to large scale local unemployment, with many local people boycotting Crosse & Blackwell products as a result.
  The factory was then bought by Martin Coles Harman, whose Branston Artificial Silk Company produced Rayon in the factory from 1927; however it too closed, in 1930. After various short-term leases, the site was again acquired by the War Office in 1937. During the Second World War a major ordnance facility known as Branston Depot was established there: it served as the army's principal depot for clothing, as well as holding stocks of other sundry items. Branston continued to operate as a Central Ordnance Depot until when the depot closed and its operations moved to Bicester. It continued as a government facility thereafter, however, first as a civilian-run Ordnance Stores and Disposals Depot (until 1975), then as a depot for the Supply and Transport branch of the Home Office, under whose auspices it stored items ranging from Green Goddess fire engines to furniture, clothing and other items for the Prison Service. For over 20 years it held emergency food stocks for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
  Since the 1990s parts of the site have been leased for warehousing or sold for housing; but a substantial area remains in use as a storage facility for the Ministry of Justice and HM Prison Service.
caption: Office block built for the National Machine Gun Factory.
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