Porton Down
Porton Down is a science and defence technology campus in Wiltshire, England, just north-east of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory – known for over 100 years as one of the UK's most secretive and controversial military research facilities, occupying – and a site of the UK Health Security Agency. Since 2018, part of the campus has housed Porton Science Park, which is owned and operated by Wiltshire Council and has private sector companies in the health, life science and defence and security sectors.
Location
Porton Down is just north-east of the village of Porton, near Salisbury, in Wiltshire, England. To the north-west lies the MoD Boscombe Down airfield operated by Qinetiq. On some maps, the land surrounding the complex is identified as a "Danger Area".History of government use
Porton Down opened in 1916 as the War Department Experimental Station, shortly thereafter renamed the Royal Engineers Experimental Station, for testing chemical weapons in response to German use of this means of war in 1915. The laboratory's remit was to conduct research and development regarding chemical weapons agents used by the British armed forces in the First World War, such as chlorine, mustard gas, and phosgene.Work at Porton started in March 1916. At the time, only a few cottages and farm buildings were scattered on the downs at Porton and Idmiston. By May 1917, the focus for anti-gas defence and respirator development had moved from London to Porton Down, and by 1918, the original two huts had become a large hutted camp with 50 officers and 1,100 other ranks. After the Armistice in 1918, Porton Down was reduced to a skeleton staff.
Post First World War
In 1919, the War Office set up the Holland Committee to consider the future of chemical warfare and defence. By 1920, the Cabinet agreed to the committee's recommendation that work would continue at Porton Down. From that date a slow permanent building programme began, coupled with the gradual recruitment of civilian scientists. By 1922, there were 380 servicemen, 23 scientific and technical civil servants, and 25 "civilian subordinates". In 1923 the newly formed Silver Star Motor Services started a bus service to link Salisbury and Porton Down. By 1925, the civilian staff had doubled.By 1926, the chemical defence aspects of Air Raid Precautions for the civilian population was added to the Station's responsibilities. In 1929 the Royal Engineers Experimental Station became the Chemical Warfare Experimental Station , and in 1930 the Chemical Defence Experimental Station . In 1930, Britain ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol with reservations, which permitted the use of chemical warfare agents only in retaliation. By 1938, the international situation was such that the Cabinet authorised offensive chemical warfare research and development and the production of war reserve stocks of chemical warfare agents by the chemical industry. This included conducting chemical warfare trials, known as the Rawalpindi experiments, on servicemen in the British Indian Army to test the effects of mustard gas.
Second World War
During the Second World War, research at CDES concentrated on chemical weapons such as nitrogen mustard. As Allied armies penetrated Germany, they discovered operational stockpiles of munitions and weapons that contained new chemical warfare agents, including highly toxic organophosphorous nerve agents such as sarin, unknown to Britain and the Allies at the time.To examine biological weapons, a highly secret separate department, called the Biology Department, Porton, was established within CDES in 1940, under veteran microbiologist Paul Fildes. Its focus included anthrax and botulinum toxin, and in 1942 it infamously carried out tests of an anthrax bio-weapon at Gruinard Island. In 1946, it was renamed the Microbiological Research Department and, in 1957, the Microbiological Research Establishment.
The Common Cold Unit was sometimes confused with the MRE, with which it occasionally collaborated but was not officially connected. The CCU was at Harvard Hospital, Harnham Down, on the west side of Salisbury.
Post-war period
When the Second World War ended, the advanced state of German technology regarding organophosphorus nerve agents such as tabun, sarin and soman, had surprised the Allies, who were eager to capitalise on it. Subsequent research took the newly discovered German nerve agents as a starting point, and eventually VX nerve agent was developed at Porton Down in 1952.In the late 1940s and early 1950s, research and development at Porton Down was aimed at providing Britain with the means to arm itself with a modern nerve agent-based capability and to develop specific means of defence against these agents. In the end these aims came to nothing on the offensive side because of the decision to abandon any sort of British chemical warfare capability in favour of nuclear weapons. On the defensive side there were years of difficult work to develop the means of prophylaxis, therapy, rapid detection and identification, decontamination, and more effective protection of the body against nerve agents, capable of exerting effects through the skin, the eyes and respiratory tract.
Tests were carried out on servicemen to determine the effects of nerve agents on human subjects, with one recorded death due to a nerve gas experiment. There have been persistent allegations of unethical human experimentation at Porton Down, such as those relating to the death of Leading Aircraftman Ronald Maddison, aged 20, in 1953. Maddison was taking part in sarin nerve agent toxicity tests; sarin was dripped onto his arm and he died shortly afterwards.
In the 1950s, the station, now renamed the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment, became involved with the development of CS, a riot-control agent, and took an increasing role in trauma and wound ballistics work. Both these facets of Porton Down's work had become more important because of the unrest and increasing violence in Northern Ireland.
On 1 August 1962, Geoffrey Bacon, a scientist at the Microbiological Research Establishment, died from an accidental infection of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. In the same month an autoclave exploded, shattering two windows. Both incidents generated considerable media coverage at the time.
In 1970, the senior establishment at Porton Down was renamed the Chemical Defence Establishment for the next 21 years. Preoccupation with defence against nerve agents continued, but in the 1970s and 1980s, the Establishment was also concerned with studying reported chemical warfare by Iraq against Iran and against its own Kurdish population.
Porton Down was the laboratory where initial samples of the Ebola virus were sent in 1976 during the first confirmed outbreak of the disease in Africa. The laboratory now contains samples of some of the world's most aggressive pathogens, including Ebola, anthrax and the plague, and is leading the UK's current research into viral inoculations.
21st century
Until 2001, the military installations based at Porton Down were part of the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. DERA was to be split into two parts: QinetiQ, initially a government-owned company; and, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, created to incorporate the activities of DERA deemed unsuitable for the privatisation planned for QinetiQ; particularly the Porton Down site.In 2013, Dstl scientists tested samples from Syria for sarin; small quantities of sarin and other chemical weapons continue to be manufactured on site to assess the effectiveness soldiers' equipment.
In April 2018, Porton Down was responsible for analysis of the substance used in the nearby Salisbury poisonings, which was ultimately identified by Dstl as a Novichok nerve agent.