Memorial details

Memorial type
Stone of remembrance
District
Purbeck
Town
Swanage
County
Dorset
Country
England
Commemoration
Civilian (19th; 20th and 21st Centuries)
Lost
Not lost
WM Reference
82090

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Current location

On the end of a building within the school grounds
special permission needed to view at this full time Autustic School
Purbeck View School- Formerly Forres School until 1993
Northbrook Road
Swanage
Purbeck
Dorset
BH19 1PR
England

OS Grid Ref: SZ 02753 79409
Denomination: Undefined

View location on Google Maps
Description
Concrete block engraved with names and an informative short statement that the building is erected in memory of the young boys lost on the beach that day.
Inscription
THIS BUILDING IS ERECTED/ IN MEMORY OF/ (Names)
Inscription legible?
yes
Names on memorial
Ardagh, Robin
Birch, Richard
Dennis, Jeremy
North-lewis, David
Oliver, Jason
See details for all 5 names
Commemorations
  • Civilian (19th; 20th and 21st Centuries)
    Total names on memorial: 5
    Served and returned: 0
    Died: 5
    Exact count: yes
    Information shown: surname, forename
    Order of information: surname
Components
  • Tablet
    Measurements: Undefined
    Materials: Concrete
Listing information
Condition
Trust fund/Scholarship
No
Purpose: Unknown or N/A
Reference
  • An account of what happened that day from eye witness survivor speaking to the House of Commons, veteran conservative MP Robert Key addressed the room detailing his memories of the traumatic experience he went through as a young boy: "On Friday 13 May 1955, when I was 10 years old, I was on Swanage beach in Dorset with some 20 other children of about the same age. We were doing what children on a beach on a Friday afternoon in May do - building sandcastles, digging holes in the sand, making dams and so on. I was building my castle with a chap called Richard Dunstan: five of my friends were digging holes, and then one of them found a tin. He thought that it was spam, or something really exotic. Yes, spam was exotic in 1955. He was wrestling to move it, because it was lodged between two rocks. He got out a shoehorn but could not break the tin open. The boys stood back, and were seen throwing things at it. My friend and I got bored. We turned round. We had our backs to our friends, and were about the same distance from them as I am from you, Mr Deputy Speaker, when there was a huge explosion. We were blown into the sea, and lived. Five of my friends died. Five British children were blown up by a British mine on a British beach, within my living memory, and the living memory of many other people. It was an extraordinary thing. It happened in the middle of the 1955 general election. The front page of the following day's edition of The Daily Telegraph carried a story with the headline, "4 Boys Die, One Missing in Explosion". Below that, smaller headlines stated, "Big Crater Torn in Beach" and "Wartime Mine Theory". There was not much theory involved for the five who were killed, or for the two of us who were the luckiest people alive. I still think that I am the luckiest person alive in this House." The body of the fifth boy was never found. All that was left were his plimsolls. Key recalled that when, in the 1990s, he had ministerial responsibility for the Imperial War Museum he asked for the papers on the incident. These showed that the mine clearance officer, who had swept the beach for unexploded devices and had given it the all clear three months before the tragedy, believed the device had been swept in from the sea. Of the 117 mines laid on Swanage beach in 1940, as Britain prepared for a Nazi invasion, 58 are still unaccounted for.

This record comprises all information held by IWM’s War Memorials Register for this memorial. Where we hold a names list for the memorial, this information will be displayed on the memorial record. Please check back as we are adding more names to the database.

This information is made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC licence.

This means you may reuse it for non-commercial purposes only and must attribute it to us using the following statement:

© WMR-82090

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