"John Rowland" wrote in message ...
Enjoy!

http://www.derelictlondon.com/

The Silvertown Disaster is rather interesting, and sad. The plant was
owned at that time by Brunner & Mond, later to become part of ICI, and
I think spun off as a separate company again a few years ago. The
process being carried out which led to the explosion was the
purification of TNT, which reacts violently with alkali. The
Government insisted that this work be carried out at the disused
caustic alkali plant, in a populated area, against the advice of the
B&M management. I don't know the exact details of the process, but it
involved disolving the explosive in hot alcohol. A major producer of
alcohol for industrial purposes was the distillary at Three Mills,
just a few km away, so it may well have come from there. This place
was still producing alcohol for munitions use at the start of WW II,
which led to it being one of the first places in London to be bombed
during that war.

Back to Silvertown, the purification was carried out by a batch
process, which produced far less output than a more modern process
used elsewhere. The small quantities of explosive produced at
Silvertown made only a small contribution to the war effort, at great
risk to the local population, and the workers at the plant. This work
really should have been carried out elsewhere.

The original market for the caustic alkali which had previously been
produced at the plant was the soap boilers that operated in the
Stratford area, using fats produced as by-products of the slaughter
houses which were set up in this area when moved out from London to
beyond the Lea.

For information about cinema buildings contact the Cinema Theatre
Association, they have a web site. I would like to see one '30s
cinema preserved with all original equipment, carbon arcs, Brenograph,
rewind room, generators or mercury arc rectifiers, nitrate film
precautions, plenum plant etc., the equipment still exists in various
places that could be put back into a suitable building, but I don't
think it's going to happen. It's just not the same running the modern
stuff.