Military History | Lochnagar Crater — The Hole Left at 07:28

Two minutes before the infantry went forward on 1 July 1916, the ground beneath the German position at La Boisselle lifted. British tunnelling had begun on 11 November 1915 under 185th Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers; 179th Tunnelling Company took the gallery over in March 1916 and finished it beneath a fortified spur the German army called the Schwabenhöhe. Two ammonal charges totalling 60,000 lb — roughly 27 tonnes — were fired at 07:28.

The attack the mine opened did not carry the village. The 34th Division, attacking here, lost 6,380 men killed, wounded and missing that day by the count in the British official history, the heaviest loss of any British division on 1 July. La Boisselle itself was not taken until the following week.

Measurements of the hole differ. The Lochnagar Crater Foundation gives 100 m across and 21 m deep; other accounts put the crater proper at 67 m and the full spread of the lip at 140 m.

Nearly every other mine crater blown on the Somme that morning was filled in and ploughed. This one survives because Richard Dunning bought the ground privately in 1978 to stop that happening. A wooden cross now stands on the rim, and the Lochnagar Crater Foundation, a registered charity in the United Kingdom, maintains the site on donations, with services held on 1 July and 11 November.

The crater is reached from Rue de la Grand Mine, at the edge of the village. A path runs round the rim inside a fence, and the chalk the mine threw up still shows white through the grass on the inner slopes.

📸 Cover: Lochnagar Crater in 2017 — Wilson44691, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.