Record Details

Summary

A crater created by an accidental explosion at an underground RAF bomb store in 1944. The explosion caused damage to buildings within a 10 mile radius and killed 81 service men and local residents. The remaining underground caverns continued to be used as ammunition stores until 1970.

Monument Type(s):

• BOMB CRATER (Second World War - 1944 AD to 1944 AD)
• WAR MEMORIAL (Second World War - 1944 AD to 1944 AD)
• DEDICATION STONE (Second World War - 1944 AD to 1944 AD)

Full description

On Monday, 27 November, 1944, at ten minutes past eleven in the morning, a large section of assorted explosives stored underground at the RAF Maintenance Unit no 21 at Fauld [PRN 50421], blew up. Excluding the nuclear explosives at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was the largest single detonation of the Second World War. Buildings within a radius of ten miles suffered varying degrees of damage (see PRNs 50423-4, 02142) and eighty-one lives were lost.
On the following day the RAF sent an aircraft over the area to photograph the devastation. A huge crater, about eight hundred feet long, three hundred feet wide, and about one hundred and twenty feet deep, had appeared on the crest of the Stone Pits Hill bluff on the south side of the valley of the river Dove. Upper Hayes Farm (PRN 50423) which had lain on top of the mine storage area had totally disappeared, engulfed by the crater. Nearby Hanbury Fields Farm (PRN 50424) was buried under the debris. The plaster factory of Peter Ford and Sons (PRN 50420), which stood at the mine entrance, was almost totally destroyed, and much of Brown's Coppice and Queen's Purse wood along the summit of the bluff disappeared.
The explosion had occurred in the smaller, 'new area' of the disused gypsum mines requisitioned by the RAF in 1937, completely destroying it. Serious damage was done to the stocks in the larger 'old area' which lay to the east of the new. Had all the stocks held in the mine gone up - about 15,000 tons, it is likely that the nearby town of Tutbury and surrounding villages would have been wiped out. The enquiry concluded that the most likely cause (since all evidence had been destroyed in the blast) was, in all probability, the removal of a composition exploder from a thousand pound bomb by the use of a brass chisel.
In (the crater's centre) lie two small crosses made up of rough blocks of alabaster, just visible from the southern edge of the crater. Hanbury's residents regard the site as a hallowed grave to those who died. (JM, 29-Apr-2003) <1>

The remaining underground caverns at Fauld continued to be used as an ammunition store until 1970. (SB, 05-Dec-2005) <2>

A Sicilian Marble Stone of Remembrance was erected in memory of 70 men who died in service during the Second World War and also the civilians who died during the Fauld Explosion. It was unveiled during a ceremony on the 25th November 1990. The monument is placed on a gravelly surround: the inscription on the smoothed front face reads: 'IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES/ IN THE FAULD EXPLOSION/ 27TH NOVEMBER 1944/ THE FIRST EIGHTEEN PEOPLE NAMED HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE/ AND THIS CRATER IS THEIR RESTING PLACE/ (NAMES)/ WE WILL REMEMBER THEM'. The memorial remains in good condition and is located to the side of the Fauld crater. (RC, 25/02/2011) <3>

The Hanbury Crater is the largest of a series of craters caused by the explosion of an ammunitions store. As a result of this explosion part of an adjacent working gypsum mine subsided. The crater can be seen as a single, very large (>50 metres) negative, amorphous earthwork. Many of the subsidiary craters caused by the Hanbury explosion have been filled in and levelled out. However, there are still many craters left open in the woods to the north. There are also huge lumps of gypsum in the fields
surrounding the main crater that must have been thrown up by the blast. (SB, 26-Nov-2013) <4>

Proposed for Scheduling in August 2014. (SB, 15-Sept-2014) <5>

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