Memorial to Victims of London's Biggest Explosion
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Memorial to Victims of London's Biggest Explosion by Danny P Robinson as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Memorial to Victims of London's Biggest Explosion
Image: © Danny P Robinson Taken: 16 Sep 2009
This memorial is at the entrance to Minoco Wharf in Silvertown. There used to be a TNT explosives factory here, belonging to Brunner-Mond & Co. For the previous 2 years (in order to support the war effort) the works had carried out the purification of TNT, an inherently dangerous activity about which little was known. On 19th January 1917 there was a fire at the factory, which led to a huge explosion. 73 people were killed, hundreds injured and there was damage to properties for miles around. The fire burned for days. Because Britain was at war with Germany, full details of the explosion were suppressed at the time. It remains London's biggest ever explosion. The memorial was erected to commemorate the victims, and company employees who died in World Wars 1 and 2.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
51.501381
Longitude
0.028591