An appeal to raise funds for a memorial to commemorate five schoolboys who lost their lives when a World War Two mine exploded on Swanage Beach, is close to reaching its target.
The hope is to unveil a plaque overlooking the beach on Tuesday 13th May 2025, 70 years to the day after the explosion which killed the students of Forres School, off Northbrook Road in Swanage – now known as the Purbeck View school site.
Former Forres School pupil Seb Warner wants to honour the lives lost on Swanage Beach in 1955
Story has largely been forgotten
Robin Ardagh, Richard Birch, Jeremy Dennis, David North-Lewis and Jason Oliver, all aged just 12 years old, were killed when a land mine detonated which they had found in the sand while out for a walk as part of the school day.
There are two memorials to the boys at Purbeck View, one on a school building and the other in the former school chapel, but with plans to redevelop the five acre site as a housing estate, it is feared they may be lost.
Former Forres schoolboy Seb Warner wants a permanent memorial in a prominent position in Swanage in honour of the boys, whose story he believes has largely been forgotten in the town.
Swanage Town Council has worked with him to find a suitable location overlooking Swanage Bay at the war memorial and just along the grassy embankment from the statue of war hero Trevor Chadwick.
Forres School, which merged with Sandleford Manor School and moved to the New Forest in 1993, hopes to be involved with an unveiling ceremony in 2025.
Swanage War Memorial from the air, in front of the site of the proposed tribute
“Five empty places at the dinner table”
Seb Warner said:
“I think most people have forgotten about the tragedy and it’s important to have a memorial somewhere prominent in town. In a perfect world we would be able to unveil it on Tuesday 13th May 2025, which will be the 70th anniversary of the tragedy.
“On that day, boys from the school went for a walk on the beach with one of the teachers and five of them who were messing around found a metal canister which they tried to get out from the sand.
“The beach had been cleared after the war, reopened and it was all meant to be safe again, but clearly it wasn’t. One boy, Jason Oliver, was blown to pieces and never found while four others were killed.
“A lot of the boys at the school didn’t know a great deal about it other than being aware that there were five empty places at the dinner table that evening. The school closed it down to a large degree and tried not to talk about it too much.
“In those days there seemed to be apathy towards it because of the horrors of the war which had only ended 10 years previously, but what I find hard to fathom is that if this happened today it would be the most unimaginable tragedy which would be reported across the world.”
The existing plaque to the boys at the Purbeck View site where housing is planned
“Ideal place for a lasting tribute”
Seb added:
“When I was at Forres between 1988 and 1993, we remembered them at the memorial service every November, and walked past their plaque on the school building all the time, thinking that these boys were our age and got blown up on Swanage Beach.
“I remember our teachers telling us not to touch anything on the beach that looked like metal, so it did resonate with us, but I do feel that the whole town should know their sad story.
“It wouldn’t be appropriate to move the existing plaque on one of the old classroom blocks, and obviously the old Forres School is going to be demolished one day – although whether they should be allowed to demolish the chapel is something to deal with in due course.
“But the Go Fund Me page is doing well, people have been really generous and we are not far away from funding a new plaque which will be made by Haysom’s from local Purbeck stone.
“Swanage mayor Tina Foster suggested a position just in front of the war memorial, a plinth with two memorials and a third, empty space – I believe it was meant to be clearly – and it’s an ideal place for a lasting tribute to the boys.”
Former MP Robert Key who died in 2023 at the age of 77, was one of only two boys at the mine site to survive
“We were blown into the sea and lived”
One of the boys on the beach that day who escaped was Robert Key, a bishop’s son who later served as MP for Salisbury for 27 years, and in his last speech to the House of Commons in 2010 recalled:
“On Friday 13th May 1955, when I was 10 years old, I was on Swanage Beach in Dorset 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 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.”
The Forres School rugby team of 1954, with David North-Lewis on the back row, second from left
58 mines unaccounted for
During the 1990s, when Robert Key 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.
However, half a century after 117 mines were laid on Swanage beach in 1940 as Britain prepared for a Nazi invasion, 58 were still unaccounted for and Robert Key ended his speech in 2010 with a plea for the whole area, from Durlston to Bournemouth, to be swept again for mines.
Munitions are still occasionally found – and safely detonated by the Army – along the beaches of Studland Bay, which was used extensively as an armed forces training area during World War Two.
A wartime shell found on Studland beach in August 2022 was blown up in a controlled explosion
Call for warning signs
Seb Warner, whose parents live at Studland, said:
“It is probably still the case that there are undiscovered explosives out there and you do wonder whether there should be signs in a prominent place to help keep people safe?
“What concerns me is that if a tragedy like this could happen in 1955, it could still happen today. Boys will be boys and if one was found today – it doesn’t take much for one to be set off.
“At Middle Beach in Studland where the sea is being allowed to reclaim the foreshore, every storm will erode the banks and you could argue it is now more likely for these things to be uncovered with the natural erosion that will escalate here.
“Obviously there will be munitions around as that whole area was used as a training ground during the war, but I do think that there should be signs put up in Swanage and Studland as a warning.”
The old Forres School site, now vacant and up for sale, marketed as an opportunity to build new homes
Further information
- Donations towards the new memorial can be made at Gofundme
