At 4am on the 1st of October 1905 residents of Millchester Road and surrounds were woken by an ear-splitting explosion, which shattered windows of the houses closest to the Queen Cross Mill, situated between Harris Lane and Arthur Jones Avenue. Doors were blown open, crockery and glassware crashed from shelves and cupboards, and a rain of machinery parts and wood splinters fell into gardens and onto roofs. The sound of the explosion was heard at the Pumping Station on the Weir, and at the Anabranch 12 miles away.

Two watchmen, James Shannon and James Ellis had been asleep on stretchers on the mill floor, some 6ft below the level of the engine room, and miraculously escaped with only slight injuries, although they had to be extracted from under fallen iron and timber.

Mill manager John McLaren, his wife and four children lived in the manager's cottage on site, and the majority of their furniture and crockery were destroyed. A cylinder from the boiler was blasted by the explosion through the walls of the cottage and lodged in their piano, almost tearing it in two. Thankfully the family managed to escape harm. 

The first arrivals on site witnessed a hellscape of torn iron, shattered timbers and escaping steam. The Queenton Fire Brigade were able to prevent fire from adding to the damage due to being situated just up the road.

The engine was completely gone, blown to smithereens, and there were mutterings about sabotage, with dynamite suspected as the explosive. Two previous explosions, at the Brilliant Deep Levels in 1896 and the Mills Day Dawn United powder magazine in 1897 both occurred at a similar time of the morning when sites were largely unoccupied. There was talk that the same person or persons might be behind all three, but although an inquest was held, no culprits were ever found.