The Silvertown War Memorial, a Grade II listed memorial, stands as a tribute to a night in January 1917. It was that fateful night when a blast at the Brunner Mond chemical plant in East London took the lives of 73 people in and around the factory and injured hundreds more. This tapering limestone obelisk about 1.5 metres high features inscriptions including: 'To the glorious memory of the men from these works who fell in the Great War 1914-1919' on the east side.
'And to the memory of those who, while serving their country by making T.N.T, perished in the explosion in these works. January 19th 1917' appears on the west side. One face of the memorial is carved with the names of 18 people, while the north face remains blank. Originally perched near the road at the entrance to the site, it was moved, restored, and re-erected closer to the River Thames as part of the Royal Wharf development in 2016.
The memorial still marks the memory of the victims of the Silvertown explosion, with kin celebrating a service beside it on the centenary of the explosion's anniversary on the 17th of January 2017.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Nicolo Ciampini
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