At precisely 6:52 in the evening on the 19th January, 1917, one of the largest explosions in the UK took place – in Silvertown, East London. The explosion killed 73 people, injured 328 more and left around 600 people with cuts and bruises as well as causing considerable damage to local buildings.

The blast took place at a munitions factory that was busy manufacturing explosives for soldiers fighting WW1 in France, and the sound of the explosion was recorded as far as 100 miles away.

Although not the absolute largest in the UK, it was fairly high up the scale and certainly the largest in London. It was also not entirely unexpected – as the factory had been forced into purifying TNT, a process more dangerous than manufacture itself and not the sort of thing you would ordinarily do in what was at the time a residential area.

Earlier in that that fateful evening, a fire broke out in the factory, and while it was being put out, somehow it reached the TNT store, with an inevitable reaction.

The blast was so great that hot material was flung as far away as North Greenwich, where one piece of debris hit a gasometer and caused that to also explode – sending a massive fireball into the sky. A boiler from inside the factory and weighing a reputed 15 tons was thrown out of the building and landed on the nearby road.

According to a report in the New York Times, an American dining in the Savoy Hotel said that the explosion blew out the windows in the hotel, which is evidently, miles from the site of the factory.

In addition, some 17 acres of warehouses in the area were destroyed by fires started from the falling debris. Nearly 1,000 homes were rendered uninhabitable by the explosion, with somewhere around 60,000 were damaged in some way.

Probably worth dwelling on that last number a bit – Sixty Thousand homes were damaged by the explosion. It was that big.

A contemporary report from the Stratford Express newspaper described the scene as if “some vast volcanic eruption had burst out  in the locality in question. The whole heavens were lit in awful splendour. A fiery glow seemed to have come over the dark and miserable January evening, and objects which a few minutes before had been blotted out in the intense darkness were silhouetted against the sky.”

“The awful illumination lasted in its eerie glory only a few seconds. Gradually it died away, but down by the river roared a huge column of flame, which told thousands that the explosion had been followed by fire and havoc, the like of which has never been known in these parts.”

The government mobilised a small army of emergency services to the area, although the local fire station was almost totally obliterated in the explosion, which lead to some delays in fighting the subsequent fire.

Over the next few months as suddenly homeless people were looked after in local churches and community halls, they laboured to rebuild the destroyed homes.

The investigation into the cause of the explosion — which was blamed in part on the factory, and part the government — wasn’t published until the 1950s.

The site of the factory has never been built upon and the area is now a car park. There is however a stone memorial near to the site, sitting rather neglected underneath the DLR railway viaduct (map link).

Silvertown Explosion Memorial

A sign next to it on the fence explains the history of the explosion, which helped with this blog post.

Silvertown Explosion Memorial

Silvertown Explosion Memorial

In addition to the memorial near the site, one of the policemen who died was later commemorated in Postman’s Park in central London.

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8 comments
  1. Pete Stean says:

    Thanks for posting this Ian – I visited this memorial a while ago when going for a walk around the park just down the street. For such an enormous event in London’s history it is so sad that the memorial is so forgotten and unloved…

  2. Peter says:

    It is marvellous to have these remarkable plaques in Postman’s Park illuminated by accounts such as yours, especially when they refer to incidents arising from the First World War, which tend to be overlooked by those arising from the Second.

  3. francesca says:

    Hi there wondering if you can help. My great grandfather was a fireman and killed in this explosion. His name was Joseph Rogers and I believe very young. We have no details on his background although we believe him to be Irish – I would love to know if there are any websites / leads I could follow up on to find out more about him. He had a son, William Rogers (my grandad). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

    • Ann says:

      Francesca, there was a Henry Rogers, aged 23 amongst those killed in the explosion. A group of us are adding details of the 73 people who died in the explosion and as many survivor names as we can find to the Imperial War Museum’s Lives of the First World War site and then adding details as we find them.

    • Sheila says:

      Ann, I am interested in your project. My great aunt Elizabeth Preston nee Roberts was killed in the explosion, along with her two small children George and Dorothy, and her mother-in-law. They had just moved into a house close to the factory a week or so before, because her husband had a new job as a miller at a nearby flour mill and was required to live close by as presumably he worked shifts. My great aunt had not wanted to move there. They did not know what was being produced at the factory, so when the fire started they went out to watch, while most of the other inhabitants, knowing what was going to happen, were running away. It was dreadful for my grandmother, who was very close to her sister, who was four years older than her. They had been orphaned when my grandmother was four years old, and sent to the workhouse. Elizabeth had determinedly kept in touch with my grandmother even when they were separated – my grandmother being fostered out to Westmoreland and Elizabeth sent into service. Elizabeth’s husband was at work when the explosion occurred and was unhurt. He must have been heartbroken to lose his entire family like that. All the compensation they received was £10 to cover the cost of the burials. He subsequently asked my grandmother to marry him, but she turned him down. I have tried to locate the burials, which my mother insisted were in the City of London cemetery, but have not been able to find them.

  4. Hi Sheila

    I am writing a piece on the 100th anniversary of the Explosion and your comment really interests me as I am doing it from the point of view of people who were told about the event. Your great aunt and her children lived in Mill Street, Silvertown. I went to school in Silvertown and also lived there until I was 14. I would love to have a little chat with you. My email is colingrainger@btinternet.com

    Many thanks
    Colin

  5. Rod Chilcot says:

    Hello Colin, My late mother was born in1908 at no.8 Lord Street, about a mile east of Bruner Monds works. She went to the Drew Road school until the school leaving age. I have a photo of her form year with the form mistress .She started her working life as a factory messenger girl at the India Rubber Gutta Percha works nearby , where her father was employed.
    At the time of the explosion she would have been 9 years old. Her parents Robert and Daisy Bayley were trained first aids with St Johns. The parlour at no. 8 became a first aid post where some of the wounded were brought for help. I recall some of her memories where she described the bloody scenes and I know that she and her siblings helped that night. Clean linen arrived from the neighbourhood and everybody helped as best they could with making various dressings and helping the wounded. No doubt they were overwhelmed and witnessed scenes similar to a war time field dressing station ,scenes quite unsuitable for children .So it was not surprising that those images haunted her for a long time.
    I visited the neighbourhood in the summer of 2015 and walked from the DLR City Airport station to the ferry terminal at N Woolwich. The victorian school building has gone, but there is a new junior school there called Drew School close to the airport terminal building. The original terraces of Lord Street houses built in the 1800s, have been replaced by a mixture of styles , as many were damaged in the Blitz. however I have some images showing the sort of properties that were there. I have some archive material which might help your research
    Please contact me. Regards ,Rod Chilcot. E mail: annchilcot@hotmail.com

  6. Mary says:

    Oh IAN – I only just saw this. I know there are lots of stories of burning girders flying across the river and hitting the gasholder – BUT – what happened was that the flying lift of East Greenwich holder No.2. (then the largest gas holder in the world) was ruptured by the shock wave. The men working in the valve room at East Greenwich saw the flash of the explosion and managed to turn off the gas supply from Greenwich before the shock wave reached them. A little bit more prosaic but not too much more

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