Mass grave in Faversham Cemetery
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Mass grave in Faversham Cemetery by Marathon as part of the Geograph project.
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Mass grave in Faversham Cemetery
Image: © Marathon Taken: 19 May 2016
Faversham Cemetery was opened in 1898. Here are buried, in this mass grave, 73 of the 108 victims of the Great Explosion of 1916. At 14.20 on Sunday, 2nd April, 1916, 109 men and boys were killed by an explosion at the Explosives Loading Company factory at Uplees, near Faversham. Fifteen tons of TNT and 150 tons of ammonium nitrate blew up when some empty sacks caught fire. No women were killed as women were not allowed to work in the factory on a Sunday. It was the second worst disaster ever to occur in the history of the UK explosives industry. The worst was at Chilwell in Nottinghamshire when on 1st July 1918 a blast killed 134 workers and injured 250 – see https://heritagecalling.com/2018/06/29/the-chilwell-catastrophe-fatal-explosion-on-the-home-front/ A very full account of the Uplees explosion can be read at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/16/brian-dillon-the-great-explosion-munitions-factory-uplees-faversham-kent-1915 For other information see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faversham_explosives_industry
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Image Location
Latitude
51.311341
Longitude
0.904583