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The Chilwell Explosion: 100 Years On Multi-Cache

This cache has been archived.

kerrfamilySBD: 5 years, only 80 finders. Not worth keeping this one going.

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Hidden : 6/17/2018
Difficulty:
1 out of 5
Terrain:
1 out of 5

Size: Size:   micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:


In 1915 the British war effort was faltering as munitions production lagged behind use on the Western front. The “shell scandal” led to the building of new factories and the repurposing of existing factories to increase shell output. One of those was in Chilwell, which quickly reached outputs of 100,000 shells per week. Tragedy struck though on July 1st 1918 when an explosion resulted in the instant death of 134 people and several others lost their lives due to injuries sustained. The blast was so devastating that many bodies were not formally identified. Although the explosion was heard up to 10 miles away that day it was not reported widely due to the need not to damage morale, and incredibly by today’s standards, production resumed the following day at other factories on that site. Indeed, just 9 weeks later the site turned out almost 300,000 shells in a single week.

The current site of the Chetwynd Barracks hosts the official memorial monument to those who died in the Chilwell shell-filling factory explosion. To fit in with the centenary of this event I have placed this offset multi which requires you to visit a blue plaque that is on a residential street rather than being on the barracks. You can only see the memorial itself on selected open days, but Attenborough Church (see waypoint 2) has a mass grave containing several dozen of the unidentified dead.

In early July 2018 there are several commemorative events in the area. Check local press for details.

To find the cache you will need to visit the blue plaque on Chetwynd Road and work out the following

A. Number of letters in the 2nd word on the top line
B. First number you read on the plaque
C. Number of words in the job title of the named person
D. Sum of the 1st two digits that appear on the plaque
E. Number of letters in the final word on line 5
F. Number of the factory in which the explosion occurred

These should sum to 26 and the final cache can be found at
N 52 54.ABC – 1 14.DEF

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

arvgure oynpx abe juvgr

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)