Additional information
Terrain
- Meadow tracks and bridleways, many stiles
Landscape
- Farmland and bomb crater
Dog friendliness
- Must be kept on lead near livestock
Parking
- St Werburgh's Church car park
Toilets en route
- None on route
About the walk
The history of Hanbury starts with the legend of St Werburgh. During the seventh century ad Werburgh, daughter of pagan King Wulfere of Mercia, founded nunneries at Repton, Trentham, Weedon and Hanbury, the latter believed to have been situated to the east of what is now St Werburgh’s Church. ... Legend has it that when Werburgh died she was buried at Trentham, but her body was stolen back by the people of Hanbury and buried in a new shrine near the nunnery. As a direct result Hanbury became a major centre for Christianity for well over a century. When the Danes invaded in ad 875, Werburgh’s body was again moved, this time to Chester for safe keeping, and it was there, in the cathedral, that she was finally laid to rest. Today, however, Hanbury is known for a much more recent tragedy. At 11am on 27 November 1944, the village witnessed the largest explosion caused by a conventional weapon in either World War; only the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bigger. In all, 70 people were killed in the blast, and 18 bodies were never recovered. The reason for the explosion is unclear, although the site is hard to miss, marked as it is by a crater more than 0.25 miles (400m) across and 100yds (91m) deep. The area around Hanbury is rich in gypsum and alabaster and a number of exhausted mine shafts became convenient storage depots for high explosives during the war. RAF personnel and Italian prisoners of war dispatched this arsenal with heightening urgency as the Allied offensive in Europe got under way, and it’s thought that carelessness, inexperience and cost-cutting all had a part to play on that fateful November morning. The first the villagers knew about it was a distant rumble before the explosion proper, which blackened the sky as tens of thousands of tons of soil and rocks were blasted into the surrounding landscape. An entire farm, including its occupants and livestock, disappeared completely, and dozens of underground munitions workers – both British and Italian – were killed. A reservoir for the nearby plaster works burst its dam, unleashing 6 million gallons (27 million litres) of water, boulders, mud and trees onto the factory below, killing 27 workers. The explosion could be heard from London, and was recorded as an earth tremor as far away as Geneva. Today, nature has healed the scars on the landscape as hawthorn, larch and silver birch have re-colonised both the crater and the surrounding area, providing a habitat for – among other things – a vast colony of rabbits. There’s still a gypsum works to the north, below which is an extensive system of mines spread over 10sq miles (26sq km).
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