Site Description Cooke's Explosive Works originate from 1865 when explosives were manufactured from guncotton, starch and india rubber in an area now known as Cooke's valley. The site covers twenty-eight hectares (70 acres) and RT Cooke bought the area from the Ministry of Munitions in 1922 and it was sold to Imperial Chemical Industries in 1958.
By the 1970s the factory supplied ninety per cent of the explosives for the coal industry in the form of nitroglycerine-based explosive products. Work ceased at the factory during 1995 and in 1996 the surviving structures were mainly of light timber construction that was surrounded by concrete walls. The works retained some mixing and incorporating mills, and cartridging machines, although by 1999 the site had been cleared and landscaped.