Local History
business viable. It was agreed Robert Williams would leave and Charles
Williams
incorporated the site duties into his manager’s role. He moved with his wife, Kezia, and their family, into the site manager’s house.
Robert The Cherry Brook
Williams listing the matters which required his attention. There seems to be little doubt that the powder mill had been allowed to become untidy, an issue which may have been amicably resolved had Charles Williams had been willing to accept the findings and offered to immediately address the faults. Unfortunately he sent a reply back to Colonel Majendie in which he took ‘great exception to the tone’ of Majendie’s
letter and
considered it to be ‘personally offensive’ and written in a way which could not be justified. In these circumstances Colonel Majendie felt he had no option but to take action and Charles Williams was summonsed by the Home Office on fifteen charges, principally relating to tidiness and upkeep of individual buildings, under the Explosives Act 1875. Much of the defence case was that the various defects identified by Colonel Majendie had existed at the time of earlier inspections, and Robert
Williams, formerly the site manager, was called as a witness to confirm that this was the situation. Nevertheless the magistrates found seven cases proven, dismissed one case, and another seven cases were withdrawn. Charles Williams was fined a total of £14 and costs of £6 6s. Again this was substantially less than the maximum penalty which could have been imposed. From the report of the court case it seems likely that Robert Williams had left the powder mills before this second case, and perhaps after he left standards had dropped. In February 1885 and again in February 1887 there were small explosions but without any fatalities at the powder mills.
By the 1880s a number of safer chemical explosives had become commercially available and there was a declining market for gunpowder.
circumstances economies had to be found to keep the
In such A surviving stack
Williams came down to the warmer climes of Tavistock where with his three sons, Harry, Sidney and Ernest, he set up in Higher Market Street as a timber merchant and later as a mineral water maker. Robert Chaff Williams, sawyer and explosives maker, turned mineral water maker, died aged 72 in 1900 at his home in Parkwood Place, Tavistock. When the powder mills closed in 1897 Charles Williams similarly took on a new career and became a successful theatre manager in Plymouth. The Tavistock Gazette in February 1902 reported ‘Mr. C. F. Williams, described as the enterprising manager of the Plymouth Theatre Royal,
has a true conception of what the legitimate drama should be, in its production for public approval’.
Williams, timber merchant and explosives maker, turned successful theatre manager, died aged 78 in 1918 at Plymouth.
Today the powder mills, a site within the Dartmoor National Park, may be visited but only the ruins of the grinding mills and one of the stacks remain. The terrace of worker’s houses, the manager’s house, and the workshop buildings have survived much restored. Present tenants are a company which builds ground stations needed to process satellite information, and an adventure holiday group who have their bunkhouse located there.
the building which once doubled as a chapel and schoolroom there is a showroom for a small pottery.
In Charles Frederick
www.dartmoordirectory.co.uk Find Dartmoor Traders, Services and Professionals online
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