3-012-025 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The explosion of gunpowder magazines at Erith: view from Burrage-road, Plumstead, by Captain Pasley, R.A., 1864. View from the window of Pasley's house. 'The main drainage outfall works at Crossness are shown to the left hand...two gunpowder magazines... exploded with terrific violence, killing eight or nine persons, if not more, wounding others, and carrying consternation and alarm among the inhabitants for miles round...The explosion occurred in a gunpowder depot belonging to Messrs. John Hall and Sons, and almost simultaneously in a magazine of smaller size used by the Low Wood Gunpowder Company...both of them located in the Plumstead marshes...The quantity of gunpowder stored in Messrs. Hall's magazine at the time of the explosion, and in two of their barges which lay off the jetty, is estimated by themselves at about 750 barrels in the depot, and perhaps 200 more in the barges, each barrel containing 100lb...Immediately after the calamity an immense pillar of smoke rose from the spot high into the air - thick, black, and palpable, with a huge spreading top - and about a quarter of an hour elapsed before it died away'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.