Swan Canaries

---

Image by Laura Ward

See a short trailer here:

 

On July 1st 1918, eight tonnes of TNT exploded at National Shell-Filling Factory Number 6, killing 139 people, 25 of whom were women workers, known as Canary Girls because the TNT gave their skin a yellow tint. The surviving workers behaved exactly as trained, returning to the site as soon as the initial blast was over, and tending to the dead and wounded, despite their own injuries. Most of the victims could not be identified. The survivors returned to work straight away, and increased their output over the next few weeks.

Despite their heroism and sacrifice their story was kept quiet to avoid the location of the factory becoming common knowledge. So we are telling it now. On June the 29th 2018 Arletty Theatre performed the award-winning play Swan Canaries at Chetwynd Barracks, the original site of Shell-Filling Factory Number 6, to mark the centenary of the Chilwell explosion.

The audience of over 300 and the company were taken back to life in the factory, almost one hundred years to the day after the tragic explosion. It was an extraordinary experience, which we found extremely moving. Here are a couple of images of the filled-shell store by Laura Ward.