West Kilbride Museum celebrates Nobel legacy in Ayrshire

The history of the Nobel dynamite factory at Ardeer is told in detail in a new display featuring photos, garments, and technology, including an original switchboard from the Ardeer site.

Ardeer was the site of the first dynamite factory in the UK. It was set up by Alfred B. Nobel and came to be the largest explosives factory in the world.

It also formed an important part of ICI from 1926, and played a key role in the daily life of many towns and villages across North Ayrshire.

The factory also was important to Nobel Explosives and ICI as a whole thanks to its development of a wide range of high explosives, used in mining and engineering and in the building of harbours, canals, railways, and roads as well as the establishing of water and electricity supplies.

Ardeer also became a major research centre for ICI, developing a range of non-explosive products across new divisions of the company.

By the 1990s Ardeer's fortunes had declined, accelerated by the demise of the British deep coal mining industry.

Changing patterns in international trade of high-explosives and competition from alternative products led to the rationalisation and closure of large parts of the factory.

The site, covering around 2,000 acres, was sold off and subsequently cleared of the historic structures which had been part of the original 1871 factory and of the subsequent expansion and rebuilding of the ICI site until the 1990s.

West Kilbride Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10.30am to 12.30pm and from 2pm until 4pm.