Porton Down is a science park in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of

Porton Porton is a village in the Bourne valley, Wiltshire, England, about northeast of Salisbury. It is the largest settlement in Idmiston civil parish. The village gives its name to the nearby Porton Down military science park, which is home to th ...

, near Salisbury. It is home to two

British government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_es ...

facilities: a site of the

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) – 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 The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a government agency in the United Kingdom, responsible since April 2021 for England-wide public health protection and infectious disease capability, and replacing Public Health England. It is an executiv ...

. It is also home to other private and commercial science organisations, and is expanding to attract other companies.

Location

Porton Down is located just northeast of the village of

near Salisbury, in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest 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 Mustard gas or sulfur mustard is a chemical compound belonging to a family of cytotoxic and blister agents known as mustard agents. The name ''mustard gas'' is technically incorrect: the substance, when dispersed, is often not actually a gas, b ...

, and

phosgene Phosgene is the organic chemical compound with the formula COCl2. It is a toxic, colorless gas; in low concentrations, its musty odor resembles that of freshly cut hay or grass. Phosgene is a valued and important industrial building block, espe ...

. 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". By 1925, the civilian staff had doubled. By 1926, the chemical defence aspects of Air Raid Precautions (ARP) for the civilian population was added to the Station's responsibilities. In 1929 the Royal Engineers Experimental Station became the Chemical Warfare Experimental Station (CWES) (1929–1930), and in 1930 the Chemical Defence Experimental Station (CDES) (1930–1948). 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 Chemical warfare (CW) involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from nuclear warfare, biological warfare and radiological warfare, which together make up CBRN, the military acronym ...

trials, known as the

Rawalpindi experiments The Rawalpindi experiments were experiments involving use of mustard gas carried out by British scientists from Porton Down on hundreds of soldiers from the British Indian Army. These experiments were carried out before and during the Second Worl ...

, on servicemen in the

British Indian Army The British Indian Army, commonly referred to as the Indian Army, was the main military of the British Raj before its dissolution in 1947. It was responsible for the defence of the British Indian Empire, including the princely states, which co ...

to test the effects of

Second World War

During the Second World War, research at CDES concentrated on chemical weapons such as

nitrogen mustard Nitrogen mustards are cytotoxic organic compounds with the chloroethylamine (Cl(CH2)2NR2) functional group. Although originally produced as chemical warfare agents, they were the first chemotherapeutic agents for treatment of cancer. Nitrogen m ...

. As

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

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 Sarin (NATO designation GB G-series, "B"">Nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for Nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound. To examine biological weapons, a highly secret separate department, called the Biology Department, Porton (BDP), was established within CDES in 1940, under veteran microbiologist

Paul Fildes Sir Paul Gordon Fildes (10 February 1882 – 5 February 1971) was a British pathologist and microbiologist who worked on the development of chemical-biological weaponry at Porton Down during the Second World War.

. Its focus included

anthrax Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium ''Bacillus anthracis''. It can occur in four forms: skin, lungs, intestinal, and injection. Symptom onset occurs between one day and more than two months after the infection is contracted. The sk ...

and

botulinum toxin Botulinum toxin, or botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), is a neurotoxic protein produced by the bacterium ''Clostridium botulinum'' and related species. It prevents the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from axon endings at the neuromusc ...

, 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 (MRD) and, in 1957, the Microbiological Research Establishment (MRE). The

Common Cold Unit The Common Cold Unit (CCU) or Common Cold Research Unit (CCRU) was a unit of the British Medical Research Council which undertook laboratory and epidemiological research on the common cold between 1946 and 1989 and produced 1,006 papers. The Comm ...

(CCU) was sometimes confused with the MRE, with which it occasionally collaborated but was not officially connected. The CCU was located 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 the organophosphorous nerve agents, such as tabun,

sarin Sarin (NATO designation GB G-series, "B"">Nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for Nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound.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 (CDEE), 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 (CDE) 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 Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after becom ...

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 installation of Porton Down was part of the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) when it was split into QinetiQ, initially a fully government-owned company, and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Dstl incorporates all of DERA's activities deemed unsuitable for the privatisation planned for QinetiQ, particularly Porton Down. In 2013 Dstl scientists tested samples from Syria for sarin, which is still manufactured there, to test 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 Novichok (russian: Новичо́к, lit=newcomer, novice, newbie) is a group of nerve agents, some of which are binary chemical weapons. The agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Ru ...

nerve agent.

Site names

The location's government use has been split into two separately controlled locations since 1979: the original military establishment under the Ministry of Defence, and the site to the south under the Department of Health, which had been opened in 1951 for the Microbiological Research Establishment, then in 1979 transferred to the Ministry of Health to focus on public health research, with the Defence aspects returning to the then-titled Chemical Defence Establishment.

Associated locations

Sutton Oak, Merseyside

A factory in Sutton Oak, St Helens was requisitioned in 1917 by the War Department, renamed HM Factory, Sutton Oak and started producing the chemical warfare agent diphenyl chloroarsine. The site switched to producing Adamsite in 1922. In 1923 the War Office halted the requisition and purchased the site, renaming it the War Office Research Establishment, a.k.a. Chemical Warfare Research Establishment, and later the Chemical Defence Research Establishment Sutton Oak. During the 1920s, the site switched to producing

products, starting with the HS variant and adding the HT variant in the 1930s, and also filling armaments. After WW2, the site also produced the nerve agent

sarin Sarin (NATO designation GB G-series, "B"">Nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for Nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound.Chemical Defence Establishment Nancekuke in July 1949. Manufacture of sarin in a pilot production facility commenced there in the early 1950s, producing about 20 tons from 1954 until 1956. It was intended as a stockpile and production facility for the UK's chemical defences during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

, focussed on nerve agents, including small amounts of VX intended mainly for laboratory test purposes and to validate plant designs and optimise chemical processes for potential mass-production; full-scale production of VX agent never took place. In the late 1950s, the chemical weapons production plant was mothballed, but was maintained through the 1960s and 1970s in a state whereby production could easily re-commence if required.

Non-government use

A few small scientific start-ups were allowed to use buildings on the Porton Down campus from the mid-1990s. Porton Down has been housing companies on Tetricus Science Park, including Ploughshare Innovations since 2005, and GW Pharmaceuticals. , an expansion plan was predicted to create 2,000 jobs. Expansion started in 2016, with £9.5m in funding from Wiltshire Council, the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership and the European Regional Development Fund.

Areas of concern

Trials

Open air

In 1942, Gruinard Island was dangerously contaminated with

after a cloud of anthrax spores was released over the island during a trial. In 1981, a team of activists landed on the island and collected soil samples, a bag of which was left at the door at Porton Down. Testing showed that it still contained anthrax spores and in 1986 the Government felt obliged to take necessary steps to successfully decontaminate the island. Between 1963 and 1975 the MRE carried out trials in Lyme Bay in which live bacteria were sprayed from a ship to be carried ashore by the wind to simulate an anthrax attack. The bacteria sprayed were the less dangerous ''

Bacillus globigii ''Bacillus'' (Latin "stick") is a genus of Gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria, a member of the phylum ''Bacillota'', with 266 named species. The term is also used to describe the shape (rod) of other so-shaped bacteria; and the plural ''Bacilli ...

'' and '' Escherichia coli'', but it was later admitted that the bacteria could adversely affect some vulnerable people. The town of Weymouth lay downwind of the spraying. When the trials became public knowledge in the late 1990s, Dorset County Council,

Weymouth and Portland Borough Council Weymouth can refer to: Places ;In the United Kingdom *Weymouth, Dorset, England :*Weymouth and Melcombe Regis (UK Parliament constituency) :*Weymouth and Portland, the abolished local government district :*Weymouth Bay :*Weymouth Beach :*Weymout ...

and

Purbeck District Council Purbeck may refer to: * Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula in the English county of Dorset ** Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum * Purbeck District, a local government district in the English county of Dorset * Purbeck Hills, a range of hills in the Engli ...

demanded a

public inquiry A tribunal of inquiry is an official review of events or actions ordered by a government body. In many common law countries, such as the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Ireland, Australia and Canada, such a public inquiry differs from a royal ...

to investigate the experiments. The Government refused a Public Inquiry but instead commissioned Professor Brian Spratt, to conduct an Independent Review of the possible adverse health effects. He concluded that individuals with certain chronic conditions may have been affected. In 1954 the British Government sent biological warfare scientists to the Bahamas to release Venezuelan equine encephalitis viruses near an uninhabited island. Other research showed that in Obanaghoro in southern Nigeria four British scientific missions spent 15 months dispersing and assessing the effects of experimental nerve gases. The effect on Nigerians is unknown. Historians have been unable to find out who did the extremely hazardous work of "hand charging" weapons containing the nerve agents nor have they been able to discover the effects on local schools, villages or the soil.

Human trials

Porton Down has been involved in human testing at various points throughout the Ministry of Defence's use of the site. Up to 20,000 people took part in various trials from 1949 up to 1989: From 1999 until 2006, it was investigated under Operation Antler. In 2002 a first inquest and in May 2004, a second inquest into the death of Ronald Maddison during testing of the nerve agent

sarin Sarin (NATO designation GB G-series, "B"">Nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for Nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound. The Ministry of Defence challenged the verdict which was upheld and the government settled the case in 2006. In 2006, 500 veterans claimed they suffered from the experiments. In February 2006, three ex-servicemen were awarded compensation in an out-of-court settlement after they had claimed they were given LSD without their consent during the 1950s. In 2008, the MoD paid 360 veterans of the tests £3m without admitting liability.

Secrecy

Most of the work carried out at Porton Down has to date remained secret.

Bruce George Bruce Thomas George (1 June 1942 – 24 February 2020) was a British Labour Party politician, who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Walsall South from February 1974 until 2010. Early life George was born in Mountain Ash, Mid-Glam ...

, Member of Parliament and Chairman of the

Defence Select Committee The Defence Select Committee is one of the Select Committees of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, having been established in 1979. It examines the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Ministry of Defence and its associated pub ...

, told BBC News on 20 August 1999 that:

I would not say that the Defence Committee is micro-managing either DERA or Porton Down. We visit it, but, with eleven members of Parliament and five staff covering a labyrinthine department like the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces, it would be quite erroneous of me and misleading for me to say that we know everything that's going on in Porton Down. It's too big for us to know, and secondly, there are many things happening there that I'm not even certain Ministers are fully aware of, let alone Parliamentarians.

Use of animals

Dstl's Porton Down site conducts animal testing. The "three Rs" of "reduce" (the number of animals used), "refine" (animal procedures) and "replace" (animal tests with non-animal tests) are used as the basic code of practice. There has been a decrease in animal experimentation in recent years. Dstl complies with all UK legislation relating to animals. Animals used include

mice A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

, guinea pigs,

rat Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus ''Rattus''. Other rat genera include ''Neotoma'' ( pack rats), ''Bandicota'' (bandicoot ...

s, pigs,

ferret The ferret (''Mustela furo'') is a small, Domestication, domesticated species belonging to the family Mustelidae. The ferret is most likely a domesticated form of the wild European polecat (''Mustela putorius''), evidenced by their Hybrid (biol ...

s, sheep, and non-human primates (believed to be marmosets and rhesus macaque). Publicly released figures are detailed below: Different departments at Porton Down use animal experiments in different ways. Dstl's Biomedical Sciences department is involved with drug evaluation and efficacy testing (toxicology, pharmacology, physiology, behavioural science, human science), trauma and surgery studies, and animal breeding. The Physical Sciences department also uses animals in its "Armour Physics" research. Like other aspects of research at Porton Down, precise details of animal experiments are generally kept secret. Media reports have suggested they include exposing monkeys to

, draining the blood of pigs and injecting them with ''

E. coli ''Escherichia coli'' (),Wells, J. C. (2000) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow ngland Pearson Education Ltd. also known as ''E. coli'' (), is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacterium of the genus ''Escher ...

'' bacteria, and exposing animals to a variety of lethal, toxic nerve agents. Different animals are used for very different purposes. According to a 2002 report from the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Defence, mice are used mainly to research "the development of vaccines and treatments for microbial and viral infections", while pigs are used to "develop personal protective equipment to protect against blast injury to the thorax".

In popular culture

Novels

An institute similar to Porton Down, the Mordon Microbiological Research Establishment, features in the 1962 novel ''The Satan Bug'' by Alistair MacLean. Porton Down features in the 1977 novel ''The Enemy'' by Desmond Bagley, the 2010 mystery novel ''Before the Poison'' by

Peter Robinson Peter Robinson may refer to: Entertainment * Peter Robinson (sideshow artist) (1873–1947), American actor and sideshow performer, known for his appearance in film ''Freaks'' (1932) * J. Peter Robinson (born 1945), British musician and film score ...

, and the 2022 novel ''Tick Tock'' by

Simon Mayo Simon Andrew Hicks Mayo (born 21 September 1958) is an English radio presenter and author who worked for BBC Radio from 1982 until 2022. Mayo has presented across three BBC stations for extended periods. From 1986 to 2001 he worked for Radio ...

Movies

Porton Down is featured in the 2022 psychological horror film ''The Sleep Experiment'' directed by John Farrelly. Two detectives begin an investigation into a disastrous secret military experiment where five prisoners were kept awake for thirty days in the facility.

Television

Porton Down and activities there during the 1940s and early 1950s were a significant plot point in Episodes One and Two of the second season of

ITV ITV or iTV may refer to: ITV *Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of: ** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...

's mystery series '' The Bletchley Circle''. Experiments conducted at Porton Down also appear in the BBC detective drama '' Spooks'', including the development of the VX Nerve Agent and other potentially deadly biological weapons. Porton Down was referenced frequently in the 2020 BBC TV drama ''

The Salisbury Poisonings ''The Salisbury Poisonings'' is a fact-based television drama, starring Anne-Marie Duff, Rafe Spall and Annabel Scholey which portrays the 2018 Novichok poisonings and decontamination crisis in Salisbury, England, and the subsequent Amesbury ...

'', portraying its role in testing substances linked to the 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Comics

Grimbledon Down ''Grimbledon Down'' is a comic strip by British cartoonist Bill Tidy. It ran in ''New Scientist'' magazine from 26 March 1970 until 26 March 1994. Description The strip was set in a fictitious UK government research laboratory, satiri ...

'' was a

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

by British cartoonist

Bill Tidy William Edward "Bill" Tidy, Order of the British Empire, MBE (born 9 October 1933), is a British cartoonist, writer and television personality, known chiefly for his comic strips. Tidy was appointed Member of the Most Excellent Order of the Brit ...

, published for many years by '' New Scientist''. The strip was set in an ostensibly fictitious UK government research lab, referring to the controversial Porton Down biochemical research facility.

Music

"Porton Down" is the name of a song by Peter Hammill. The song "Jeopardy" by Skyclad is about the experiments developed in Porton Down.

References

* ''Porton Down: A Brief History'' by

G B Carter G, or g, is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''gee'' (pronounced ), plural ''gees''. History T ...

, Porton Down's official historian. * ''Chemical and Biological Defence at Porton Down 1916–2000'' (The Stationery Office, 2000). by G B Carter * ''Cold War, Hot Science: Applied Research in Britain's Defence Laboratories, 1945–1990'' by Bud & Gummett

Notes

External links

DSTL Official Website

University of Kent, 28 January 2010
Wiltshire police Operation Antler information

Letter from the Department of Health to Health Authorities regarding the Porton Down volunteers
2005
Archive of the month – Gaddum Papers
Pharmacology and war: the papers of Sir John Henry Gaddum, March 2007, Royal Society
Inside Porton Down: Britain's Secret Weapons Research Facility
– television programme, BBC Four, 28 June 2016 * {{authority control 1916 establishments in England Biological research institutes in the United Kingdom Biological warfare facilities British human subject research Buildings and structures in Wiltshire Chemical research institutes Chemical warfare facilities in the United Kingdom Military research establishments of the United Kingdom Military medical research Research institutes in Wiltshire Science parks in the United Kingdom Toxicology in the United Kingdom United Kingdom biological weapons program