Dummy hand grenade
Dummy hand grenade, made by Forrest & Sym Ltd, Manchester, around 1914.
Dummy hand grenades are used to familiarise military recruits with the weight, shape and feel of the small bombs, without the threat of harm. They do not contain explosives or a fuse. The deeply grooved outside surface is designed to fragment when a live grenade is detonated.
Forrest & Sym was an iron foundry located on Phillips Park Road in the Bradford area of Manchester. The Ardwick, Bradford, and Ancoats areas of the city made up a significant area for iron and steel works, taking advantage of the good transport links, initially the canal network and later rail and road links.
Prior to the First World War, Forrest & Sym was a traditional iron foundry making domestic items such as coal scuttles and shovels. During the war the factory was requisitioned to manufacture hand grenades and gas bombs. Forrest & Sym became an engineering firm as well as a foundry.
The area where the factory was located was cleared in the late 1990s to make way for sports facilities used at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The area in East Manchester is has become known as Sportcity, it is the largest concentration of sporting venues in Europe. Forrest & Sym Ltd was finally wound up as a company in 2004.