BellBoard

Rung after Morning Service, at the invitation of the PCC to commemorate the Fauld Explosion when, at 11:11pm on 27th November 1944, 3670 tons of bombs exploded en-masse in an underground weapons storage facility. The force of the blast damaged every building in Hanbury and left a crater about 30m deep, 230m wide which covers an area of about 12 acres. It was heard as far away as Daventry and registered in seismographs in Switzerland. The force was about one fifth of that of the Hiroshima bomb making it one of the largest non-nuclear explosions, and the largest explosion on UK soil. The official death toll was 70 of which 18 have no known grave. Papers released in 1974 (the 30-year rule) indicated that the cause was a worker removing a detonator with a brass chisel rather than a wooden batten.