During the First World War, factories across the country were set up to make munitions for the armed forces. These were mainly staffed by women, or ‘munitionettes’ as they were known. The Darlington National Projectile Factory opened in August 1915, staffed by more than 1,000 munitionettes. The factory was in the North Road Shops, run by the North Eastern Railway and became known as the ‘Shell Shop’.
This is the first shell of its type to be made in the Darlington factory. The women of Darlington made more than one-and-a-half million shells and repaired more than two million cartridge cases.
Image courtesy of Head of Steam – Darlington Railway Museum
