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Aintree Racecourse
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Internationally known Aintree Racecourse has long been famous worldwide as the home of the Grand National Steeplechase.
Click Racecourse History Site
Did you know that it has also been home to an aircraft factory and an armaments factory during the first world war, and during the early part of the second world war, a French Naval camp, and a huge US Army camp ?
Alongside
the Racecourse is the Aintree Retail Park. This was formerly the site of a
large factory built in the First World War
by the government to manufacture aircraft and in a separate group of
buildings was a munitions works making shells
Photograph showing women at work inside National Aircraft Factory No 3. Three national aircraft factories were established by the Cunard Steamship Co in 1917 and started production the following year. As well as this one, there were factories at Waddon in Croydon, and at Stockport near Manchester. The Aintree factory’s objective was to aid the war effort by building 500 Bristol Fighters to supply the new and rapidly-growing Royal Air Force. Production was under the auspices of the newly-created Air Ministry, 126 aircraft had been built by the time the war ended in November 1918
Photograph taken for the Cunard Steamship Company showing women at work making shell cases in a Cunard armaments factory at Aintree, for use during World War I (1914-1918).
During the 1930s a Dutch company re-opened the buildings as a textile factory known as the British Enka Artificial Silk Co Ltd
It was eventually acquired by Courtaulds Ltd, to manufacture synthetic fibres until it's closure during the 1970s.
During the early part of the second World War it became part of the allied war effort. initially as a camp for French Navy personal after the fall of France to the Nazis.
Later, in 1943 the site was used as a base for thousands of US Army soldiers and airmen, in preparation for D-Day.
It became a link to the docks at Liverpool, where supplies and equipment arrived aboard merchant ships sailing from America, and carried in convoys across the Atlantic.
The picture on the left shows an American P-47 Thunderbolt plane being escorted from the floating road way at the Pier Head Liverpool, on their way to the Lockheed factory at Speke for delivery to various US Airbases across the UK.
Photo courtesy of
Burtonwood Heritage
Tanks,
vehicles, and equipment, that were to be used in the Invasion of France on D Day, were transported by road from
the docks to Aintree.
The whole of the racecourse site became a gigantic vehicle park.
At the end of the war, the American forces departed
as quickly as they had arrived, and the Racecourse slowly returned back to
normal, leaving hardly a trace behind
The only visible trace of the presence of the US Army in Liverpool is this Stone Plaque on the wall of the old Floating Roadway at the Pier Head
Link to
Click World
War two history site
E-mail address Click john-kerrigan@blueyonder.co.uk
Map of Aintree Racecourse area. Map
of Aintree
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