FANNY CHEESEMAN
1818-1893
EXPLOSIVE POWDER MAKER
It’s rumoured that Guy Fawkes’s explosives came from an unauthorised maker in Battle. It wasn’t until
the late 1600s that official powdermaking licenses were issued, the first to what is now Powdermill Lane,
near Battle, with Tunbridge (as it was spelt then) following in 1813, in conjunction with Humphrey Davy
and the Children family. Ingredients were a moistened mixture of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur. This
was then ground or ‘milled’ between large round, flat stones rather like a flour mill, powered by water,
then compressed under heavy weights before processing into fine grained powder. Inevitably accidental
explosions occurred on site, killing workers, so it was a dangerous place to work. The powder was put
into barrels and transported by road and river barges. Rail transport would, however in 1847 for example,
the GWR concerned over safety ordered that special ‘machines’ be used for transporting ‘gunpowder and
combustible materials’ by rail.
Fanny was born in Tonbridge in 1818 to Jane Morgan, a japaner (imitation black laquerwork) and Henry, a
carpenter and millwright at the local powder mill. Fanny married Lancashire-born John Cheeseman in 1835
and by 1851 they were living next door to Fanny’s mum and dad. Fanny, John and the three eldest of their
eight children (aged 11, 12 and 13!) worked as powder makers for Burton’s gunpowder company. Their
advertisements read: “confidentally recommended to all sportsmen as unrivalled, possessing great strength,
cleanness, and promptness of ignition, and requires but a trial to prove its superiority.” These explosives
were also very useful for railway building, for blasting chunks of rock and earth to form cuttings and
tunnels.
After the death of Mr Burton, the Company and mill was sold. By 1861 the Cheeseman family had upped
sticks to Kendal in the Lake District, where Fanny’s husband was foreman of the gunpowder works in
Helsington, until the 1890s. They had made new lives in Kendal, both dying there towards the end of 1893.
Fanny was 75, John was 83.
LINKS
Gunpowdermaking in the Battle area
https://historymap.info/Gunpowder_Mills#How_gunpowder_was_manufactured.5B1.5