Qualla: Chilwell Filling Factory Memorial https://qualla.com/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/j/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Chilwell Filling Factory Memorial https://qualla.com/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial Chilwell Filling Factory Memorial: Introduction https://qualla.com/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial/ Photo credit Dave Sommerfield, CC BY-SA 3.0. Of the one hundred and thirty-four people killed in the National Shell Filling Factory at Chilwell on the evening of 1 July 1918, only thirty-two could be identified. The rest were buried together in a mass grave at the parish church of St Mary's in Attenborough, two miles down the valley. They are still there. The memorial that names them — a concrete truncated pyramid on three steps, ringed with white-painted shell casings linked by chains — stands inside the security perimeter of Chetwynd Barracks, almost on the spot where the Mixing House used to be. You cannot walk up to it without a pass. The blast that scattered the bodies it commemorates landed on the ground you are standing on.

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Image: Dave Sommerfield | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/j/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-wp/gcrj-chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Chilwell Filling Factory Memorial: Eight Tons of Amatol https://qualla.com/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial/ Photo credit Andy Jamieson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The factory had opened in February 1916, in the second year of the war, on a stretch of meadow between Nottingham and Ashby de la Zouch. Empty shell casings arrived by rail from foundries elsewhere in Britain. At Chilwell they were filled with amatol — one part TNT, four parts am...

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Image: Andy Jamieson | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/j/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-wp/gcrj-chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-eight-tons-of-amatol.mp3 0:06 2 full Chilwell Filling Factory Memorial: The Names Not Known https://qualla.com/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial/ Photo credit Andy Jamieson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two hundred and fifty more were injured. Of the 134 dead, twenty-five were women — the figure was almost certainly higher counting both shifts in adjacent buildings, but twenty-five is what the Home Office record settled on for the women alone. Many of the bodies could not be tol...

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Image: Andy Jamieson | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/j/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-wp/gcrj-chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-the-names-not-known.mp3 0:06 3 full Chilwell Filling Factory Memorial: The Cause They Never Found https://qualla.com/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial/ Photo credit Andy Jamieson, CC BY-SA 2.0. A Home Office committee published its report on the explosion on 7 August 1918, five weeks after the event. The police investigated suspicions of sabotage. Neither inquiry could conclusively identify what had triggered the blast. Sabotage was the wartime instinct — Lord Chetwynd ...

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Image: Andy Jamieson | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/j/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-wp/gcrj-chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-the-cause-they-never-found.mp3 0:06 4 full Chilwell Filling Factory Memorial: A Pyramid Built by the Workforce https://qualla.com/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial/ Photo credit Andy Jamieson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The memorial was built by the factory's own workmen, under the supervision of the construction manager S.A. Kay. They cast a concrete truncated pyramid on three steps and topped it with a short obelisk. Around the top they mounted shell casings — the same kind they had been filli...

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Image: Andy Jamieson | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/j/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-wp/gcrj-chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-a-pyramid-built-by-the-workforce.mp3 0:06 5 full Chilwell Filling Factory Memorial: The Grave at Attenborough https://qualla.com/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial/ Photo credit Andy Jamieson, CC BY-SA 2.0. For most of the century the people who wanted to mourn the dead of Chilwell could not visit the memorial; it was inside an Army depot. They went to the parish church at Attenborough instead, where the mass grave had its own modest marker. In 2018, on the hundredth anniversary, th...

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Image: Andy Jamieson | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/j/chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-wp/gcrj-chilwell-filling-factory-memorial-the-grave-at-attenborough.mp3 0:06 6 full