What used to be there? I drove through the other day, it's mahoosive!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckshaw_Village

Royal Ordinance factory. Made munitions for the war. Huge place and had its own train station.

We priced a bit of work there and the land is so contaminated you would not believe.

We're working on it at the moment doing all the infrastructure for the new Tesco and also put in one of the main link roads a coupe of years ago.
I had a tour / site visit of the place before any of the new works had started, accompanied by security for my own safety! There were numerous underground bunkers with tunnels linking them and seeing as they were built so quick I found it amazing they were all bone dry.
Part of the remedoation involed 'firing' where they basically walked round with flame throwers to get rid of gun powder deposits etc.
Got a few friends that live on there now; apparantely all power is by electric as they're not allowed to use gas (I'm not convinved by this though).
Google earth used to show it before any works had been done and you can make out the bunkers from the shadows; may have been updated now though.

I had heard that residents were advised not to grow their own veg on the basis that it is likely to be contaminated from the ground.