The Bumps in the Night

The town of Faversham in East Kent is better known for its breweries and surrounding hopyards and orchards than for gunpowder and things that go bump in the night. Yet it has as long an association with the explosives industry as almost any place in Britain. Edward Jacob, an eighteenth-century local historian, claimed that the town's first gunpowder works was established 'in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, if not before her time'. The only other early works were at Rotherhithe (known to exist in 1555) and Long Ditton, where George Evelyn, grandfather of the diarist, built a gunpowder works perhaps as early as 1561.

Making and transporting gunpowder was always a highly dangerous business – it was often moved by water, with the horses which pulled the barge wearing a kind of carpet slipper to prevent sparks from their hooves igniting the cargo. The development of high explosives in the nineteenth century was in principle more scientific, but it had its element of risk – as the events at Faversham seventy years ago demonstrated. The bang that went up from Oare Marshes, Faversham, at about 1pm on April 2nd that year was heard or felt as far away as Norwich and Southend.