Your Street In WW2 - How Did It Fare?

Born in 1938 I lived at 9 Stokenchurch Road, Wandsworth throughout the war. In 1944 the siren sounded and we trooped out to our Anderson shelter in the back garden. Miss Lamb lived on the top floor didn't bother she told us later that she looked out of the window and saw a VI doodlebug coming towards the house. The engine cut-out and it started to glide. At the last minute it veered off skimmed over the rooftops and exploded two streets away. A lucky break for her and us.
I was able to go to school next day and collect shrapnel on the way and ask passing Yanks if they had 'Got any gum chum?'

 

We lived in Guinness Buildings Stamford Hill here are some of my memories of the Blitz

I used to lay kitchen chairs on floor to form cockpit of Spitfire when playing,

After all wireless programmes the Morse code for V for victory was played.

Bom Bom Bom BOM, I always tried to beat this out using a leather pouffe as a drum and remember being disappointed that I could not get a change of tone for the fourth beat

Dad was a photo on mantelpiece Mum showed us every day.

To get to school we went out of flats, across main road and up a side street.

One day all the streets were marked off with white tape. And we had to walk around long way. I found out years later that a bomb had gone straight down an air vent to a shelter, fractured a Gas/Water main and several hundred people killed.

The big thing in school playground was who found the largest shard of shrapnel on the way to school after a raid. We thought this came from German bombs but most of it was from our own ACK ACK guns (anti air craft) we still picked things up even though constantly warned about Butterfly Bombs that had maimed many children. (Little anti personnel bombs that fluttered down on little wings like sycamores.)

BALA
I remember pestering American Troops.
Got any Gum Chum
Wada you know Joe.
Joey for King
Also any RAF with open neck battledress got special attention as we thought this signified a Fighter Pilot.

 

I had a weekend break in Scarborough last year and noticed that some streets had 1950’s “council houses” opposite some beautiful Georgian town houses. Some streets of Georgian houses are interspersed with 1950’s style houses.

In Longwestgate the playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn lives in 3 adjoining (and interconnecting) Georgian town houses with a long row of “social housing” opposite.

The penny dropped that it was post war reconstruction of houses destroyed by enemy air attacks.

Steve

 

There was a gap in a row of houses in Prince Rock Plymouth, just down from where my nan lived. Rumour had it that a stray bomb had hit the house in the war and the space had been haunted ever since. It wasn`t until the `80s that someone built on it.
I did my apprenticeship at a bus depot in Plymouth in `79, and a couple years in I was told that a UXB had gone in deep at the end of my pit during the war. They couldn`t find it so just filled the hole with concrete. It was, I believe, maybe a load of nonsense, even though the depot had been hit several times during the blitz (even blowing a double decker onto the roof of the workshops). It did make me slightly jumpy for a couple of days though.
The air raid shelters were still in the bottom yard at the time but I never ventured into them as they were flooded.

 

For info in case anyone wants to dig deeper

Bomb Census survey records 1940-1945 - The National Archives