Chart Gunpowder Mills

Chart Gunpowder Mills

Chart Gunpowder Mills
Fleur de Lis Heritage Centre
Faversham
Kent
ME13 8NS

Tel: 01795 534 542
E-Mail: ticfaversham@btconnect.com

Web: Chart Gunpowder Mills

About Chart Gunpowder Mills

Centre of the nation's explosive’s industry for 400 years, the 18th century Chart Gunpowder Mills are the oldest of their kind in the world, powder from which was used at the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo.

Chart Mills were part of the Home Works, Faversham's first gunpowder factory and one of the first in Britain. It was established probably circa 1560 but the Chart Mills were rebuilt when the Government took control some 200 years later.

Following Chart Mills' closure in the 1930s, it fell into disrepair and was almost lost until The Faversham Society rescued the Mills, restored it and opened it to the public in April 1969.

Chart Mills is one of the very few fully restored gunpowder mills in the country and, given a suitable water supply, is fully working.

Chart Mills is an incorporating mill, the process where the ingredients, saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal, having been mixed together, are incorporated together to become an explosive mixture.

Incorporating was the most vital process as it determined the quality, power and evenness of burning of the powder; in all there was 11 processes in the whole manufacture of gunpowder.

The Chart Mills site had 2 waterwheels driving 4 mills, and the pit of the other wheel and the circular bed stones can still be seen as can some spare edge runners on the bank beyond, moved from another site.
Later a steam engine was added; the site is buried under the houses opposite.

The present wheel is of all iron construction with the water flow being controlled by a sluice and power transmitted by steel 'floats'.