At the Castle, which received over £7million from National Lottery players in 2004, they met three girls from the Beechwood Girl Guiding Community who have been exploring the role of the Newport Gun Girls.

Who were the Gun Girls?

Aged 10, 11 and 15, Kissy, Heidi and Megan have been working with other Brownies, Rainbows, Guides and Rangers to find out what life was like for The Gun Girls, women workers based at Newport’s Royal Ordnance Factory 11 (ROF11) during the Second World War.

As part of the National Lottery funded project, they learnt about their everyday experiences and achievements, as well as the wider implication of their role as women working in what was considered at the time very much a ‘man’s role’, 

The young people also found out more about what life was like in wartime Wales, exploring popular music, film and art from the era.

Gun Girls’ story brought to life

As well as museum visits and attending workshops, over 100 young women and girls worked with historians and experts to create a bilingual animated film documenting the lives of the women engineers at ROF11.

Their film was used to help teach other young people studying history at school about the Gun Girls, and it was subsequently distributed to various film festivals across the UK so the achievements of the women factory workers from Newport could be heard outside Wales too.