The village of Hanbury on the eastern edge of Staffordshire came together last night to remember lost and injured family and others in the UK's largest explosion ever in the UK.
On 27 November 1944, use of the wrong tool in the ammunition stored in a worked-out gypsum mine 140 feet underground, detonated over 3,800 tons of explosives. The resulting creating a crater was over a thirdrid of a mile wide. It caused devastation in the local area, was heard clearly in Coventry, as a loud rumble in Weston-super-Mare and registered on seismographs as far away as Casablanca.
Much of the village was wrecked and the surrounding towns of Burton-on-Trent and Uttoxeter were damaged. The farm above the caverns vanished without a trace.
Official reports put the death toll at 57 civilians, seven RAF personnel and six Italian prisoners of war. A further 18 souls were never found.
On Wednesday evening, St Werburghs Church in Hanbury was crowded with well over 100 attending the moving service which has been held every year since. It included poems, prayers and playback of eyewitness account collected in the 1990s. The choirs of Hanbury and Tutbury parish churches joined forces to sing the anthem and the scouts and guides were on parade.
Reader John Harrison (pictured(left) with vicar, Revd Terry Williams) gave an emotional address on behalf of villagers, recounting the events as locals were affected by them - children kept in school until parents had been accounted for, the effect of thousands of tonnes of debris scattering around the farms and hamlets. His own family got off very lightly - only Granny's house was demolished. And his own post-war, pre-Health & Safety childhood exploring the crater, looking in pools for sticklebacks and frogs.
Throughout the week an exhibition about the disaster been available in Hanbury Church between 10am and 3pm and will remain open daily until 2 December. It will then move to Tutbury Parish church and be available on 7,8 and 12-15 December, approximately 10am-12pm (exact details on Facebook)
Meanwhile 25. miles to the north-west, one other commemoration of the tragic day was held at the Apedale Valley Light Railway. at Chesterton near Stoke. Among the preserved railway relics there are an engine and half a dozen wagons that worked at the site, and ITV Central were there to tell the story. Interestingly the report includes two aspects of interest to a diocesan audience: firstly, a former vicar from Uttoxeter; and secondly, the three wagons featured were sold in 1970 by the RAF from Fauld to a vicarage garden in Leicestershire where they ran on the 'Cadeby Light Railway for 30 years thanks to Revd Teddy Boston, immortalised by his friend in one of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories as 'The Fat Clergyman'.