Qualla: Faversham Munitions Explosion Memorial

Faversham Munitions Explosion Memorial: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thirty-four names are carved in lead lettering along the granite kerb of the mass grave at Faversham. Thirty-nine more bodies in the same grave are recorded as "male person unknown." Another thirty-five names appear on a separate stone nearby - victims whose families chose to bury them elsewhere. On 2 April 1916, at 2:20 on a Sunday afternoon, three TNT explosions tore through the Explosives Loading Company's factory number 7 at Uplees on the salt marshes outside Faversham. At least 108 men and boys were killed, the youngest seventeen and eighteen, the oldest in their sixties. Almost a hundred more were injured. Because the country was at war and wartime censorship kept the story out of the newspapers, most of Britain never learned what had happened. The memorial in Love Lane cemetery is now Grade II*-listed - one of the highest protections English heritage law can give a structure - and the centenary of the explosion in 2016 finally gave the dead the public recognition the original moment had denied them.

Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Faversham Munitions Explosion Memorial: The Town That Made the Gunpowder

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Whippet, CC BY-SA 2.0. Faversham had been making explosives since the 16th century - the first gunpowder factory in England was established here, taking advantage of the salt marshes that pushed potentially-dangerous work safely away from the town centre, and of the deep-water creek that let finished m...

Image: Chris Whippet | CC BY-SA 2.0

Faversham Munitions Explosion Memorial: Building 833

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Building 833 was a wooden shed. Inside it sat 15 tons of TNT and 150 tons of ammonium nitrate. The initial inquiry, delivered on 17 April just two weeks after the disaster, found that empty linen sacks - used for transporting explosives, piled up against the outside of the shed -...

Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Faversham Munitions Explosion Memorial: Who They Were

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first dead were the men who had been trying to put the fire out. The entire fire brigade of the factory was killed in the blast. Twenty workers from the neighbouring Cotton Powder Company who had come over to help fight the fire died as well. Six soldiers from the 4th Battali...

Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Faversham Munitions Explosion Memorial: Buried in Silence

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Wartime press censorship kept the explosion almost entirely out of the British newspapers. The country could not afford the public to know how vulnerable its munitions supply was, or how badly things could go wrong on the home front. The funerals went ahead in near silence. Many ...

Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Faversham Munitions Explosion Memorial: The Stone That Names Them

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit pam fray, CC BY-SA 2.0. The memorial in Love Lane cemetery was paid for by the Explosives Loading Company, the firm that had owned the factory. They also undertook to maintain it. It was unveiled and dedicated on 27 September 1917 by the Archbishop, the same Randall Davidson who had taken the funerals. ...

Image: pam fray | CC BY-SA 2.0