Grenfell Road - a previous tragedy

It is probable that most people around the world will be aware of the tragedy that befell the residents of Grenfell Tower in 2017 but fewer will know the area in which the 1974-built block is located. Grenfell Road, on which the tower stands, is today part of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, a product of the reorganisation of London's local government in 1965. Prior to this date, Grenfell Road had formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Kensington, a solidly working class area known as Notting Dale and as we can see from the extract from the 1939 A to Z atlas, a warren of smaller roads running to the east of Latimer Road Station, which was then part of the Hammersmith & City Branch of the Metropolitan Line.

The impact area (arrowed) on the 1939 A to Z (author's image)

As Christmas 1944 approached, the war-weary residents of the area, along with all Londoners were hoping for a quiet Christmas and perhaps had begun to have thoughts about the end of the war in Europe being on the distant horizon. Since September 1944, London had been under attack from the latest of Hitler's vengeance weapons, the V-2 rocket but on the evening of 12 December 1944, the residents of Notting Dale were hoping for a peaceful night - there had been no nearby incidents since 6 December, when the "Red Lion" pub in Marylebone had been destroyed by a direct hit but at 22:40, the silence was shattered by an explosion in the area between Treadgold Street, Lancaster Street and Grenfell Road.

As was usual with these weapons, destruction was widespread and not limited to the immediate area of impact. As we can see from the extract reproduced below from the LCC Bomb Survey, many buildings were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable but remarkably, just two people lost their lives in the incident; 61-year-old Edith Bryant of 21 Grenfell Road and 39-year-old Edith Ryell of 9 Grenfell Road. The BC4 report held at the National Archives in Kew informs us that 30 people were seriously injured, with another 20 "lesser injuries". The missile had been fired just minutes earlier from Battery 444 at Scheveningen, in the Netherlands and was one of ten fired by this particular battery on the day and one of twenty two in total fired on that day.

Extract from BC4 Report held at the UK National Archives (HO198/106)

The National Archive file connected with this incident also contains some useful sketch maps and photographs, with which it is possible to compare some of the views with a "then and now" perspective, although such was the level of damage incurred not only as a result of this incident but also due to earlier damage in the Blitz, that when the London County Council began the post-war redevelopment of the area, the local geography of the road network was changed, further compounded by the construction of the Westway in the 1960s and 70s, which submerged many of the roads in the north of the area seen on the 1939 map.

The 1944 map drawn immediately after the incident (HO198/106)

Google Maps view of the comparable area today (author's screen grab)

We can see above some of the changes on the geography by comparing the BC4 map drawn immediately after the incident, with the Google Maps view of the comparable area today. For example, Lancaster Road no longer exists, apart from a short section of it which has now been renamed Whitchurch Road and Grenfell Road today continues north on a new alignment, crossing the site of Lancaster Road, at the end of which lies the ill-fated Grenfell Tower.

Photograph Plot from BC4 Report (HO198/106)

There is also a useful map in the file which references where each of the bomb survey photographs were taken and using this map, it is fairly easy to use Streetview to take a comparable view of the same scene today. In the first comparison shots below, we see image #1, which is the view from Bomore Road, looking towards Grenfell Road, compared with the similar view today.

This is image #1 from 1944 looking from Bomore Road towards Grenfell Road (HO198/106)

The same view taken in 2020 (author's screen grab from Google Streetview)

Whilst in the views below, we see 1944 images #3 and #4 which show Treadgold Street forking off to the right, with Grenfell Road bearing left. The modern image has been incorrectly labelled Barandon Walk by Google Maps, when this is actually a public walkway in the Lancaster West Estate which is out of sight behind the camera operator.

Treadgold Street on the right with surface air raid shelter, with Grenfell Road bearing left (HO198/106)

Comparable view today, with Grenfell Road mis-captioned as Barandon Way (author's screen grab)

Next, we see 1944 photographs #8 and #9, taken from the corner of Treadgold Street looking into Grenfell Road. We can see in the modern comparison view that the Victorian houses in Grenfell Road have been totally demolished and replaced by the Lancaster West Estate.

Photos #8 and #9 looking from Treadgold Street into Grenfell Road (HO198/106)

The comparable view today looking towards the Lancaster West Estate (author's screen grab)

The final view is a montage of photographs #10, #11 and #12, which is impossible to compare with a modern view as the houses in the photograph have been demolished but it does demonstrate the level of blast damage caused to the houses in Grenfell Road.

Images #10, #11 and #12 taken from the rear of Lancaster Street, looking towards Grenfell Road (HO198/106)

This then is Grenfell Road, like many parts of London, an area who's modern geography is framed by events of almost eighty years and ago and which has seen tragedy in war and more recently.

Unpublished Sources:

HO198/106 - Region 5: London Headquarters Forms BC4 12 Dec 1944 to 1 Feb 1945 - UK National Archives, Kew

Web Sources:

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html

The Last Rocket: The Tragedy of Hughes Mansions

One block of Hughes Mansions as built in 1929 (Evening News)

As we head into March and a new spring, perhaps we should cast our minds back to the early spring of 1945; Germany was in its death throes, assailed on all side by the Russians in the east and by the British, Americans and Canadians in the west. In Berlin, Hitler was already in the bunker where he would soon meet his end but lived in a fantasy world where he still spoke of some miraculous final victory.

In the capital of arguably the biggest thorn in Hitler's side, war-weary Londoners were still under fire from the most technically advanced of his so-called Vergeltungswaffen or  "Vengeance Weapons" which still fell upon their familiar streets, as well as on eastern England and across the North Sea in Antwerp with disheartening regularity.

The other day, I paid a visit to the site of where the very last of these missiles to hit central London impacted, on a now quiet estate in Whitechapel, in the inner eastern suburbs. 

The surviving original block of Hughes Mansions on Vallance Road (author's photo)

Hughes Mansions, on Vallance Road consisted at that time of three roughly similar apartment blocks which contained 93 flats spread over the three buildings. They had been completed in 1929 and were regarded as a welcome improvement on the old "back to back" slums that had once stood here. The blocks were named after Mary Hughes JP, a Quaker philanthropist and erstwhile member of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney's Housing Committee.

Born in Mayfair in 1860, Mary, or "May" as she was often known, was the daughter of Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown's Schooldays. She had left home in 1883 to become her uncle John Hughes's housekeeper in Newbury, where he was a vicar and had soon become involved on the Board of Guardians at the local workhouse, where she soon caused a stir by insisting on better conditions for the paupers who lived there. Upon her uncle's death in 1895, she moved to Whitechapel to live with her sister, who was married to the Rev. Ernest Carter and whilst there, continued her work as a Poor Law Guardian, as well as becoming a volunteer visitor to the local hospital and children's home. She had joined the Quakers in 1918 and in 1926, purchased a former pub in Vallance Road, which she renamed the Dewdrop Inn (a play on the words "Do Drop In"), which she turned into a community centre and refuge for the homeless.

Blue Plaque to Mary Hughes in Vallance Road (author's photo)

Mary was an indomitable character, who had once been run over by a tram. Before being taken to hospital, she had insisted on writing a note stating that the tram driver was not to be blamed for the accident and when she was in hospital and told that she was recovering faster than expected, she apparently sat up and shouted "Three cheers for vegetarianism and teetotalism!" 

She had died, aged 81 in 1941 but today is commemorated by a blue plaque on the former Dewdrop Inn building in Vallance Road, which stands opposite the blocks that bear her name. Mary would doubtless have been appalled at the terrible fate which would befall Hughes Mansions just four years after her passing.

Hughes Mansions on the bomb damage map, showing the two blocks marked in purple at the top, centre (author's photo)

On Tuesday 27 March 1945 at 07:12 GMT in the Haagse Bos area of Den Haag in The Netherlands, Battery 3/485 fired a V-2 rocket in the direction of London and just nine minutes later, reports came in to the Stepney Borough Civil Defence Control of a major incident at Hughes Mansions. The missile had scored a direct hit, on the very centre of the three blocks, making a crater some 30 feet by 10 feet and totally destroying the centre block in the process. The block immediately to the east was almost completely destroyed, whilst the rear of the western block, which faces on to Vallance Road was severely damaged. 

The impact crater and aftermath of the V-2 (UK National Archives)

Some victims were never found, vaporised by the blast whilst many others were trapped where the blocks had collapsed. Rescue work continued apace, with sixteen heavy rescue teams and five cranes on the scene, as well as eleven light rescue squads and over seventy National Fire Service personnel assisting in the work. The last survivor was extricated at around 22:00 that night, after which the squads concentrated on the grim task of recovering the victims. Many of the rescuers were veterans of the Blitz but found this particular job, especially at this eleventh hour of the war, the hardest they had ever encountered.

The Hughes Mansions site after clearance (Evening News)

Hughes Mansions, in common with much of the East End of London at this time, was home to a considerable Jewish population and so no doubt Hitler with his twisted mind, would have been extremely pleased had he known that what proved to be his penultimate missile fired at London had taken 120 Jewish victims out of the total of 134 people who perished in their own homes that morning.

Hughes Mansions was rebuilt after the war and ironically, some of those who survived the V-2 incident were rehoused here. Today, the demographic of the area has totally changed and the residents here are overwhelmingly from London's Asian community.

The replacement block at Hughes Mansions (author's photo)

There is a very modest memorial to those who died here in the garden area of the rebuilt portion of the estate; so modest in fact, many of the local residents appear to be unaware of what happened here. Whilst I was taking my photographs, I was challenged by a resident and asked what I was doing - when I pointed out the memorial, showed him some of the archive photos and told him what had happened here almost 76 years ago, he was visibly shocked and thanked me for informing him. Perhaps this will lead to the memorial being better cared for, or perhaps supplemented by something more fitting.

The memorial plaque at Hughes Mansions (author's photo)

At 16:48 the same Tuesday, one further rocket was fired which impacted a few minutes later at Kynaston Road in Orpington in suburban Kent, killing 34-year-old Ivy Millichamp in her own kitchen and seriously injuring twenty three other people. These proved to be the final civilian casualties in Great Britain of the war, some six weeks before the end of the war in Europe.

Published Sources:

Hitler Passed This Way: 170 pictures from the Evening News - Evening News, 1945

Hitler's Rockets - Norman Longmate, Front Line Books, 2009

Unpublished Sources:

HO 182/808, Ministry of Home Security, Air Raid Damage Region No. 5 London (Stepney) - UK National Archives, Kew

Book Review: The Thames at War, Saving London from The Blitz by Gustav Milne

The Blitz remains a defining moment in the more recent history of our capital city, a time when Londoners found themselves under almost nightly attack from September 1940 to May 1941 and following a welcome intermission in the second half of 1941 and 1942, were once again under fire during the Little Blitz of late 1943 to early 1944 and rounded off by Hitler's so-called "Vengeance Weapons" from June 1944 right up until late March 1945, barely six weeks before the Nazi capitulation signalled the end of the war in Europe.

This new book by Gustav Milne and the Thames Discovery Programme, a community based archaeological project that surveys the Thames and it's foreshore, tells the story of the London County Council's Thames-Flood Prevention Emergency Repairs Service, or "T-F" for short, one of the lesser known facets of London's Civil Defence organisation during those wartime years, which was largely the creation of Sir Thomas Pierson Frank, the LCC's Chief Engineer from 1930 to 1946 - a classic case of "Cometh the hour, cometh the man" if ever there was one.

The River Thames is London's raison d'etre and then as now, feeds a major port, which during the Second World War was the largest and busiest in the world. But whilst acting as London's life blood, an enemy bomb, doodlebug or rocket could breach the river's embankments at high tide, or fracture one of the many tunnels running beneath it and instantly turn the Thames into a terrifying monster which could kill thousands, paralyse the capital's services and cripple a major part of the British war effort.

As we learn from this book, the embankments were breached on numerous occasions, as were at least two of the tunnels running beneath the Thames but thanks to the superb work of the T-F teams, coupled with a certain amount of good fortune, a major flood disaster in the capital never followed.

The book begins by telling us something of the history of the various floods to affect London in the years prior to the Second World War and of the establishment of the T-F Service. A detailed summary of the works undertaken by the various Rapid Response Teams of the T-F Service then follows, which explains how their work was undertaken of necessity always with one eye on the clock and the state of the ever changing tides. We then learn something of the other emergency services on the river, such as the Auxiliary Fire Service and the Thames Division of the Metropolitan Police, as well as the efforts to keep London's river crossings open throughout the Blitz and the running repairs that were frequently required following heavy raids. We also learn of the work of the various engineers and labourers who worked for the T-F Service, many of whom remain anonymous to this day. Of course, the Port of London would be meaningless without the shipping that served it and the book finishes up with a section devoted to the ships lost on the river and in it's estuary, as well as examining the role played by the Thames during two pivotal operations of the war, DYNAMO and OVERLORD, both of which were crucial to the ultimate Allied victory.

I have one very minor complaint - the author insists on calling the V-1 Buzz Bombs "Rockets" - this is not correct, they were "Flying Bombs" which were not rocket powered (they were propelled by a pulse-jet engine) and I suspect that he has perhaps got them slightly confused with the subsequent V-2 weapons, which were indeed rockets designed by one Wernher von Braun and his team.

However, this is a minor gripe which did not detract from my overall enjoyment of this well-written, profusely illustrated and meticulously researched book and I have no hesitation in commending it to you, whether you are a guide like me, or have a more general interest in London's wartime history.

THE THAMES AT WAR: Saving London from the Blitz
By Gustav Milne

Published by Pen & Sword

RRP: £19.99

Hardback, pp208

Book Review: City of London at War 1939 - 45 by Stephen Wynn

The latest in Pen & Sword Military's excellent series of "Your Towns & Cities in World War Two" covers the City of London, the "Square Mile" that was and remains the financial and business heart of the United Kingdom and comes from the author Stephen Wynn, who has contributed many books to this series.

Several books have been written on the subject of the City of London during the Blitz, concentrating on specific raids, more usually the great fire raid of 29 December 1940, which became known as "The Second Great Fire of London" but in this new offering, Mr Wynn has sensibly decided to look at all aspects of the Square Mile during the conflict and does so in a chronological, year-by-year basis and covers such events as the establishment and organisation of the Civil Defence Services in the City and the Home Guard, as well as Parliamentary and local authority representation. The book also looks at how various establishments and institutions fared during the war, such as the Tower of London and St Bartholomew's Hospital.

As we travel through the years to 1940 and 1941, the focus inevitably shifts to the Blitz and it is with this aspect of the book that I have some issues. For example, in several of the larger raids, the author details the casualties but rather than just providing us with a list of those who lost their lives and perhaps their ages, Mr Wynn feels the need to attempt to provide details of each person; this is fine where the individual has an interesting past or has an intriguing story behind them but merely repeating "the author has been unable to confirm exactly where he/she was buried" becomes tedious in the extreme after in excess of fifty repetitions. Surely it would have been better just to list the names in an appendix and just mention some of those individuals in the main text whenever they had an interesting story to tell.

Another gripe - and one that suggests more than a little laziness in the author's research process - concerns the terrible incident at Bank Station, when he mentions a casualty who was serving with the Women''s Voluntary Service which warrants the comment from the author "This also suggests that the Bank Underground Station was being used as an air raid shelter at this time." This statement beggars belief as even a cursory check with the London Transport Museum or of the official London Transport wartime history would have revealed this to be a fact and indeed, it was the fact that the station was being used as a shelter which accounted for the high casualty figures.

A fault in the research process is also suggested when the author mentions another casualty, this time at Cannon Street, when he mentions "William worked as a fireman and in the circumstances, it was more likely that he was at Cannon Street working rather than just passing through at the time." Once again, this shows a lack of proper research, as an inspection of the London Fire Brigade Roll of Honour, which is readily and easily accessible, reveals that the person in question was indeed on duty. Incidentally, the author speculates over this particular fireman - William Frederick Knight - but then completely overlooks his colleague Stanley Thomas Conniff - who died with him at the same location on that same night. At least one other London fireman who died in the Square Mile on the same night, albeit at a different location completely fails to warrant a mention, so one has to wonder at the completeness of the casualty lists that the author provides.

My final complaint concerns one of the photographs, which is captioned incorrectly; a photo that purports to be The Guildhall is clearly the Mansion House and should be corrected.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, the author relates many interesting anecdotes and facts during the narrative, which leads us through the slightly quieter years of 1942 and 1943, before we reach the momentous events of 1944 and 1945 which set the country firmly on the road to victory, against a home backdrop of the Vengeance Weapons campaign of those years, both of which affected the Square Mile, although curiously, the author fails to mention the V-2 attack on the City of London Corporation owned Smithfield Market of 8 March 1945, which caused heavy loss of life.

This book is an interesting resource which should appeal to the general reader but which in this reviewer's opinion, requires a carefully revised and updated second edition.

Published Sources:

London Fire Region Deaths on Duty During the Second World War - WF Hickin, The Watchroom 2006

London Transport at War 1939 - 1945 - Charles Graves, London Transport 1974

The Shelter of The Tubes - John Gregg, Capital Transport, 2001

The Auxiliary Fire Service: From Army Dodgers to Heroes with Grimy Faces

A group of AFS firemen (and cab) at Gordonbrock Road School (author's collection)

The Auxiliary Fire Service or AFS was formed in 1938 at the time of the Munich Crisis and on its formation, there were many who doubted the motives of those who volunteered for firefighting duties. An explanation for this early hostility could perhaps have been due to the fact that volunteers for the Fire Service were automatically exempted from the call-up to military service. As a result, a fair number of conscientious objectors were attracted to the AFS and although attitudes towards these principled individuals were more enlightened than during the Great War, there were still many small-minded citizens who could not bring themselves to show any sympathy towards this attitude.

As a result of this, aided and abetted by some of the more hysterical sections of the press, both local and national, there was still some lingering hostility towards the AFS during the dying days of peace and during the so-called "Phoney War" period immediately after the declaration of war in September 1939. "£3 a week Army Dodgers"  and "£3 a week to play darts" were just two of the insults directed towards these volunteers. There was also some hostility towards the Auxiliaries from the regular firemen themselves; some of this was aimed at the conscientious objectors from a minority of firemen who had previously served in the armed forces themselves and harboured outdated views. Sadly though, some was racially motivated, especially towards the considerable Jewish contingent who volunteered for service in the AFS. Some of this was the casual anti-Semitism which pervaded (and which sadly sometimes still pervades) society, whilst some of the more overt hostility came from members of Mosley's British Union of Fascists, some of whom served within the Fire Services.

Firemen in Cheapside on the morning of 30 December 1940 (author's collection)

Fortunately, once the bombs began to fall, it was clear to the public at large that the firemen (and women) were not "Army Dodgers" at all and had in fact, volunteered for the most dangerous role within the Civil Defence and the prejudice aimed at them rapidly evaporated. The truth of the matter was that the newly formed Civil Defence service, of which the Auxiliary Fire Service was a major part, was essentially a citizen army of local people and tended to reflect the ethnicity of the local recruits. For example, in the Aldgate and Whitechapel areas of East London, some 85-90 per cent of the Civil Defence was Jewish - simply local people playing their part in helping to defend their own neighbourhood.

The London Fire Brigade in 1939 was under the control of the London County Council and across the whole of the United Kingdom, the Auxiliaries were similarly held under municipal control. Such a vast expansion of the Fire Services required a similar increase in the number of accommodation and equipment. The former was easily solved by invariably using school premises, newly vacated as a result of the evacuation of school children and which with their catering facilities and ample space for parking, were ideal for use as makeshift fire stations. More of a problem was the provision of sufficient vehicles to act as fire engines. In the capital, the London Taxi came to the fore, towing a trailer pump and with a ladder strapped to the roof rack. Their drivers also went to war and their encyclopedic knowledge of the streets made them an invaluable weapon in the fight against the fires lit by Hitler's bombs.

A London Taxi in attendance at All Hallows-by-the-Tower on 30 December 1940 (author's collection via LMA)

As the word 'auxiliary' suggests, the AFS provided additional or extra capacity to the regular fire brigades and was designed to supplement them by acting as a sort of mobile reserve which could be deployed from city to city in times of great need. The fragility of this plan became evident on the first day of the Blitz, when AFS units arrived from outside the capital only to find that their equipment was not always compatible. For example, hydrant connections were of differing gauges and the standards of training often differed from region to region, so whilst the provincial volunteers were certainly willing, they were not always able to assist. There were also sometimes petty arguments between the various local authorities who controlled the country's fire services. which sometimes prevented the rapid movement of the AFS volunteers from one municipality to another.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, the men and women of the AFS performed heroically during the Blitz. Despite their intensive training, most of the firemen of the AFS had never tackled a 'normal' fire prior to the commencement of the Blitz on 7 September 1940, let alone the sort of fires caused by incendiary and high explosive bombs but during the first twenty two days of the bombing of London, they had fought almost 10,000 fires across London. The Firewomen (the use of the word 'Firefighter' didn't begin until the 1980s) didn't actually tackle fires during the Second World War but instead performed equally vital duties such as Fire Watchers, Drivers and managing the communications network and by 1943, over 70,000 women had volunteered for the Fire Service across the United Kingdom. As a result of their work during the Blitz, the firefighters found themselves feted as "Heroes with grimy faces" a phrase originally coined by Winston Churchill but one which caught the imagination of a grateful public.

Firemen Remembered plaque at Invicta Road School (author's photograph)

However, as a result of the experience gained during the Blitz, it was clear that coordinated action was required, not only to ensure commonality of equipment and training but also to ensure that the petty regional jealousies were overcome. Therefore, on 18 August 1941 the 1,400 separate fire services in Britain were nationalised and a new body, the National Fire Service or NFS was formed in their place. This new service quickly set about tackling the problems caused by the differences in organisation and equipment thrown up by the huge number of former municipal brigades. There were some frictions at first as old habits died hard but it was quickly realised that the nationalisation was for the greater good and the new NFS under the command of the former head of the London Fire Brigade, Sir Aylmer Firebrace, was soon to prove itself more than equal to the challenges thrown up by the Baedeker Raids of 1942-3 and the Little Blitz of 1943-4 as well as the greater problems caused by the V-1s and V-2s of 1944 and 1945.

After the War, the NFS was eventually disbanded in 1948 and the regional fire brigades were taken back under municipal control. However, the standardised procedures and equipment remained in place and thus it is fair to say that the National Fire Service formed the template for today's modern fire services that we all take for granted in their efficiency and dedication to duty.

The National Firefighters' Memorial (author's photograph)

In London alone, 327 firefighters - male and female - were killed during the war but thanks to the work of the charity Firemen Remembered, many memorial plaques have been places at locations where firefighters lost their lives. The National Firefighters Memorial, opposite St Paul's Cathedral was originally commissioned in 1991 following a campaign led by Cyril Demarne OBE, a former senior officer in the NFS and later the London Fire Brigade. Originally designed solely as a tribute to those London firefighters who gave their lives during the Blitz, in 2003 the monument was expanded into a national memorial with the names of a further 1,192 firefighters from across the country who have died in both peace and war being added. Today, this memorial with its evocative image of three firefighters tackling the fires of the City of London and also protecting the Cathedral serves as a lasting and fitting memorial to those men and women of the country's fire brigades who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Published Sources:

Jewish Participation in the Fire Service in the Second World War - Stephanie Maltman & Martin Sugarman, Valentine Mitchell 2016
London at War - Philip Ziegler, Sinclair Stevenson 1995
The London Blitz, A Fireman's Tale - Cyril Demarne OBE, After The Battle 1991

Out of the Ruins

The 1950 Ordnance Survey Map of Greenwich Town Centre (Dave Wood)

Regular readers of this blog may remember that back in February of this year, we looked at a fascinating photograph that had been provided by Dave Wood @liverpoolimages of Enderby's Wharf, taken immediately post-war in 1946 and how we were able to compare the photograph with the LCC Bomb Damage Map as well as the same view today.

Dave has now posted another image, this time of an Ordnance Survey Map of Greenwich Town Centre dating from 1950, which regularly features the slightly enigmatic description "ruin" on the map. Given the date of the map, it is apparent that the ruins are in fact, bomb damaged buildings and following on from the Enderby Wharf exercise, it might be interesting to compare Dave's OS Map image with the ARP Incident Log, photos of the bomb damage and how it compares to the Bomb Damage Maps for the area.

Aerial view of Greenwich Town Centre immediately post-war, almost certainly taken from the Town Hall clocktower (Author's collection)

What is just as significant as the ruins marked on the OS Map is perhaps what isn't shown; in 1950 there are large areas of emptiness in what was before the war and what is today a thriving built up area. These empty spaces are bomb sites, of which there were plenty in London in the immediate post-war years, some even surviving into the 1970s and 80s. The LCC Bomb Damage Maps for the area are held at the Greenwich Heritage Centre along with the Civil Defence Incident Logs that this author spent many hours transcribing some years ago. These resources are invaluable in translating the basic information on the Ordance Survey Maps into showing exactly which buildings were damaged and at what level of damage.

Greenwich Town Centre Bomb Map (Author's image from original at Greenwich Heritage Centre)

Luckily, as Greenwich has been well photographed over the years, we are able to compare the maps with photographs taken immediately after the war which graphically show the amount of damage incurred by German bombs during the Blitz of 1940-41 and subsequent V-Weapons Campaigns of 1944-45.

Therefore, if we start just below the centre of the two maps, we can see Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Alfege Church of 1718 clearly marked on the OS Map and at first glance all seems well. Compare this however with the Bomb Damage Map and we see that the church is marked in light red, signifying "Seriously Damaged, Repairable at Cost." An examination of the photograph, in which the roof of the church can be seen (unfortunately the spire is out of shot) towards the top left of the image, shows that the roof of the church is still showing signs of wartime damage, with repairs still at an early stage. The church was damaged on several occasions during the Blitz but the killer blow came on the night of 19 March 1941 when the church was gutted by Incendiary Bombs which lodged in the roof timbers, eventually causing the entire roof to plummet into the church itself where the fire burned out of control for some time. There was also an Oil Bomb reported exploding in the Churchyard on the night of 10/11 May 1941 but this seems to have done little if any damage. Happily, the church was rebuilt under the direction of Sir Albert Richardson and re-consecrated in 1953 and continues today to be an important spiritual centre of the community.

Looking at Dave's OS Map, we can see that directly opposite the church, the only building shown is a bank, in 1946 the Westminster Bank but today a Natwest branch. There is a large fallow area either side of the bank and this can be confirmed by looking at the Bomb Map, which shows many buildings coloured in black, which indicates "Total Destruction." This is interesting, because closer examination of the 1946 photograph shows that the bank building is actually still standing, although there is obvious damage both to it and to pretty much everything else left standing in the surrounding area. The cause of this almost total destruction was caused by a V-2, or as described at the time in the Incident Log, a "Long Range Rocket" which was reported at 16:19 on 24 January 1945, causing four fatal casualties, seventeen serious injuries and another ninety two walking wounded. Thanks to the excellent V2 Rocket website, we know that this missile was lauched some five minutes previously in the Den Haag area of The Netherlands. The V-2 Rockets caused widespread damage, mainly in London but also in liberated cities such as Antwerp and Brussels but which mercifully came too late to alter the outcome of the war, with the final British bound example falling at Orpington, Kent on 27 March 1945, less than six weeks before the final German surrender.

If we look again at the photograph and come slightly nearer to the camera, we can see on this side of the church The Mitre public house, which still stands today on the three-way junction with Roan Street, Straightsmouth and Greenwich High Road. Once again, there are some anomalies between the OS Map, the Bomb Damage Map and the photographic evidence, which shows the pub looking somewhat the worse for wear but probably still open for business, whilst the OS Map shows "ruins" on both sides of it. A closer look at the photograph confirms what looks like a bombed out building next door to the pub in Roan Street (which today seems to form part of the pub itself), whilst the Bomb Damage Map makes no mention of any bomb damage whatsoever at this end of Roan Street.  The only bomb damage recorded in the Incident Log for Straightsmouth is a V-1 Flying Bomb further along the road, which caused severe damage to the railway embankment on 1 July 1944 and caused seven serious casualties but thankfully no fatalities. There are some further buildings marked in purple, meaning "Damaged Beyond Repair" at the junction of Straightsmouth and Roan Street but the cause of this damage is unknown as there is no mention of this in the Incident Log, although there is a corresponding fallow area on the OS Map. Despite all of this visual evidence, the bomb that caused the damage to the pub and which caused the adjacent buildings to be described as ruins, is still something of a mystery as it does not appear to have been accurately recorded. The only possible explanation is blast damage caused either by the V-2 that destroyed the area opposite St Alfege Church, or by the V-1 in Straightsmouth described above, or perhaps a combination of both.

The clearing up operation after the V-1 of 1 July 1944 (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

A further look at the photograph adjacent to the tram nearer to the foreground shows some obvious bomb damage, which on the Bomb Damage Map is indeed marked in purple, as "Damaged Beyond Repair." It is hard to pinpoint exactly when this damage was caused as there were so many incidents recorded but it was probably caused on 18 September 1940 when incendiary bombs fell in the area and were reported as having destroyed number 277 and adjacent buildings on the opposite side of the road (again marked in purple on the Bomb Damage Maps), so it would seem a fair assumption. The photograph bears out the level of damage as there is a fairly large extent of cleared land on the left hand side of the road as we see it in the foreground.

On the right hand side of the photograph, to the rear of Greenwich High Road, there is almost total destruction still evident in 1946. This is almost certainly the legacy of another V-1 Flying Bomb which fell on Burney Street on 27 June 1944, causing many houses to be destroyed as well as causing widespread blast damage to the already battered area. Many of the houses were damaged beyond repair and subsequently demolished. Today, the abrupt ending of the surviving terrace gives away the location. In one of those strange post-war twists of fate, the land was later used as the site of the new Greenwich Police Station, which ironically replaced the original Police Station in Park Row, itself destroyed by a Flying Bomb in July 1944.

Damage to Burney Street after the V-1 incident of 27 June 1944 (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

As a matter of interest, the nearest Air Raid Wardens' Post was 'West 5', located in the Town Hall further along Greenwich High Road, which also housed the Borough Civil Defence Control Room. The new Town Hall, completed in 1939, is an impressive Art Deco structure which with it's tall clock tower (from which the aerial photo was taken) dominates the immediate area. It houses a substantial reinforced basement, which apart from the Wardens' Post and Borough Control Room, was also the location of a large public air raid shelter, capable of housing some seven hundred people. This, together with the other public shelters in the vicinity, would have been in frequent use during most of the incidents mentioned above.

Moving further away from the camera nearer to the Thames and almost entirely out of shot behind the church, is another area shown on the Bomb Damage Map as having incurred severe damage. Unfortunately, this area is just off the top of the page for the OS Map, so we are unable to compare the two maps on this occasion but it does make interesting viewing. This area close to the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, is shown in a combination of colours, mainly black for "Total Destruction" but with large areas of purple "Damaged Beyond Repair" and crimson "Seriously Damaged - Doubtful if Repairable" showing on the map. There is also a large area shown in green, which indicates a "Clearance Area" which in other words is an area already reduced to rubble and which has already been cleared for redevelopment. The bulk of this devastation was caused by yet another V-1 Flying Bomb that was reported at 06:24 on 3 August 1944 and which killed one person. Had the weapon fallen a few hours later, the casualties would doubtless have been higher as this was a busy area of shops and small businesses, as well as a pedestrian thoroughfare to the Foot Tunnel. Almost the whole block, including the gutted remains of the old 'Ship Hotel', which had already largely been destroyed by a HE Bomb in November 1940, was subsequently cleared to allow the building of the dry dock to house the Cutty Sark in 1954.

As always, the photographs and the two maps make fascinating reading, showing as they do an area that is familiar today to residents and visitors alike, in a completely different light. The documents also show the difficulties that sometimes arise when researching an area's wartime history and the dangers of becoming over reliant on one particular document or source of information. The LCC Bomb Damage Maps are an excellent resource and are invariably correct but one has to remember that these were produced by fallible human beings, often in the heat of the moment. What appeared beyond repair to one local authority building surveyor was sometimes actually very repairable in reality. Likewise, the Civil Defence Incident Logs were written very much in the heat of the moment and therefore sometimes get locations muddled or wrongly named. What always helps are the photographs of any bomb damaged area as these provide incontrovertible visual evidence, even though they do sometimes throw up more questions!

However, the use of all of these sources together will usually allow the determined researcher to get to the bottom of most mysteries as well as providing hours of harmless fun in the process!

As this is likely to be the final blog post for 2016, I'd like to thank everyone for reading and commenting upon the various articles, as well as wishing all of our readers the compliments of the season and also a happy and healthy 2017. We will be back in January with further reports on our wartime history.

Unpublished Sources:

LCC Bomb Damage Maps for Greenwich - held at Greenwich Heritage Centre
Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich Civil Defence Incident Logs - held at Greenwich Heritage Centre 
Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich Public Air Raid Shelter locations - held at Greenwich Heritage Centre
Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich Air Raid Wardens' Post locations - held at Greenwich Heritage Centre

A Little More from Lilliput

Reclining Figures sketched by Henry Moore at Liverpool Street (author's collection)

Regular readers will hopefully remember the March 2016 edition of this blog in which we looked at the wartime anthology of the pocket sized magazine, Lilliput and in particular a report on the work of 'Mickey the Midget', a shelter warden in East London. As there was an extremely positive reaction to this post and there are many more articles in the book to choose from, it seems a good idea to re-visit the magazine and the subject of life in wartime London.

Perhaps one of the most iconic images of life in the capital during the Blitz is that of shelterers in the London Underground, who at first endured conditions that were, to say the least, primative but who eventually, with the aid of some forceful individuals similar in outlook to Mickey Davis, managed to improve conditions out of all recognition and formed meaningful communities in their own right.

Despite the experiences of the First World War, when the public was permitted to use the London Underground as a means of sheltering from the Zeppelin and Gotha raids of 1915-18, by the time of the Munich Crisis of 1938, the British Government had decided not to allow the British public the use of the Tubes during any future conflict, for fear of encouraging a "Troglodyte" or "Deep Shelter Mentality." This was one of the many examples of pre-war Governments underestimating the common sense of the British people, who it was wrongly assumed, would take to the shelters at the first hint of an air raid and remain there, never to surface in order to perform their normal duties in wartime industry. In reality, the majority of people had no desire to remain underground indefinitely and merely wanted to do the sensible thing and take shelter until such time as the bombers had passed before getting with their lives as normally as possible.

This was still the official position when the bombing of London started on 'Black Saturday' 7th September 1940, although the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill had already begun to press the Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson to open the Underground system to the public for sheltering purposes. At first Anderson resisted, supposedly fearful that large scale use of the Tubes would paralyse the system and he would only release the Aldwych-Holborn Branch for this use. For the remainder of the Underground system, posters with the following message were on prominent display across the network:

"THE TUBE STATIONS ARE REQUIRED FOR TRAFFIC PURPOSES AND THE TUBE STATIONS ARE NOT AVAILABLE AS AIR RAID SHELTERS."

Despite this seemingly unequivocal message, the lack of deep shelters in London and indeed across the country was a contentious issue and elements from the political Left continued to push for the Tubes to be opened up, at the very least pending the construction of purpose built deep level shelters. In the event, it wasn't the Communist Party, Labour Party or any other political faction that caused the Government into a change of heart, it was the sheer force of numbers of normal civilians who invaded the network on 'Black Saturday' who used the simple expedient of buying a ticket and then choosing not to travel. There was nothing in London Transport's regulations that said that passengers buying a ticket had to travel, so when people began to simply remain on the platforms, there was little the authorities could do but to acquiesce. People Power had won the day and the Government, to it's credit, did the sensible thing and began to hastily make improvements to make the system more habitable.

Shelterer at Aldwych Station sketched by Tom Purvis (author's collection)

However, these improvements took time to implement and when the American author Negley Farson visited Aldwych Station in early September 1940, he recorded a picture of somewhat primitive conditions where people were trying to make the best of things:

"One night, about six o'clock, I stood in the Strand with the long line of shelterers waiting to go down the famous Aldwych Tube. It was very much in the newspapers at the time. Nearly everyone (except those who were occupying it) believed it had just been opened as a public shelter. The Press, unwittingly, was giving the impression that great things were being done. As a matter of fact, when the authorities were complacently accepting all the ballyhoo about opening it as a shelter, it had been packed almost to capacity for over three weeks.

The first person in line was a girl, twenty years old, holding an eighteen month old baby in her arms. She told me later that she was expecting again in January. She had been standing there for an hour and a half. The next seventy people in line had of course, been standing there for slightly shorter periods. And there were more people piling up behind them while I was waiting to go down with them. She bared her gums and laughed, saying 'Maybe I'll faint. I did yesterday. Then there was an air raid and they had to let us down.'

The collapsible steel gates of the Tube were locked. They were not supposed to be opened until 6:15 but this evening an Underground worker came along and let the crowd down shortly before six. We descended 132 steps. The people scampered about the platform below to find their favourite places. This girl carried her baby to the far end and spread out a blanket. Then, from somewhere, she produced two sheets of corrugated cardboard - the thick packing case stuff. She placed her baby of top of it, 'So that he won't get damp' she said simply.

I asked her where she lived and she said in Vauxhall. She had to wait half an hour to get a bus here tonight 'And this morning I had to wait two hours before I could get one home.' 

'Bleedin bus conductors' blew out a heavy woman who was planting a family down beside us. 'Know what they said to us this morning? Ya, 'We'll take you' he says 'but we won't take your ------- bundles!'

Well it was quite a scene for a dark, damp, smelly tube - with an open 'Gent's' latrine staring you straight in the face. Lest I be accused of painting the picture, this was the Aldwych Tube; the position of the bucket latrine, used by the men, was some ten feet from the stone steps of the platform - and I'll take a chance and swear on it that there will be plenty of witnesses to come forward and swear that the only veil that covered it from public view at that date was two torn strips of burlap - with a jagged, unclosable gap between them of at least eighteen inches from top to bottom. As the light-weight woman put it, 'We has a free public view - stalls. Ha ha.'

Shelterers on Aldwych Station in the early days (author's collection)

Things did improve gradually; by December 1940 the tracks had been boarded over and rows of bunk beds installed. Chemical toilets were added as was a better ventilation system. Arrangements were made with Charing Cross Hospital for nurses to visit the shelter and later a proper First Aid Post was installed. Other stations followed suit and shelter life began to become more bearable.

Another part of the network used as a shelter was the as yet unopened extension to the Central Line east of Liverpool Street. Again, at first conditions were appalling and when the artist Henry Moore visited the shelter soon after its opening, he found hundreds of what were to become his trademark 'reclining figures' seemingly stretching for miles ahead. To him, the inhabitants had been "sleeping and suffering for hundreds of years."

As well as Henry Moore, the Lilliput wartime anthology, as you would expect, contains several other articles written about shelters and the experiences of shelterers, written by authors such as Ritchie Calder, Julian Huxley, Quentin Reynolds and Margery Sharp. The latter piece tells of how the Tubes were also a good place for a young lady (or gentleman for that matter) to meet someone of the opposite sex!

The articles also tell of how the Tube shelterers, despite being drawn from a multitude of social, racial and political groups, in other words, London in microcosm, formed enduring communities and how the various Shelter Committees even produced news sheets, such as the Subway Companion, The Swiss Cottager, The Holborn Shelter News, The Belsize Park Tube Magazine, The Goodge Street Siren and The Station Searchlight, which was the journal of the Oval Station shelterers. The first edition of the Swiss Cottager welcomed readers thus:

"Greetings to our nightly companions, our temporary cave dwellers (surely a gentle dig at the Government's initial 'Troglodtyes' injunction), our sleeping companions, somnambulists, snorers, chatterers and all who inhabit the Swiss Cottage Station of the Bakerloo Line nightly from dusk until dawn."

Children can sleep anywhere! (author's collection)

The purpose of these newsletters, apart from engendering a community spirit, was to assist in the self-governing nature of these shelters, to share information, to provide hints and appeals for cleanliness and hygiene and to provide some relief from the nightly drudgery of sheltering by providing humorous articles and cartoons.

In spite of the lull in the bombing from May 1941 until late 1943, the Tubes remained available and the onset of the 'Little Blitz' and the V-Weapons campaigns ensured another upsurge in the numbers using them as well as the new, purpose built, deep-level shelters and the continuation of the V-2 Rocket campaign on London (the last one fell on 27th March 1945) meant that the Tube Stations were in use almost right until the end of the War in Europe. The highest number of shelterers using the Tube had been recorded on 27th September 1940, when some 177,000 were recorded as having taken refuge from the bombs but even on VE Night, there were still over 12,000 people using the Tubes, although the majority of these were homeless who had been bombed out and would be given temporary accommodation, ironically some in the Deep Level Shelters until such time as more permanent arrangements could be made.

The Tube Stations themselves quickly reverted to a more peacetime guise, with the first bunks being removed on 12th April 1945 and the last (at South Wimbledon Station) on 31st May 1945.

Printed Sources:

Bomber's Moon - Negley Farson, Victor Gollanz Ltd 1941

Lilliput Goes to War - Edited by Kay Webb, Hutchinson 1985

London Transport at War - Almark Publishing, 1974

The Shelter of the Tubes - Capital Transport, 2001

The Tide of Change

Enderby's Wharf 1946 (Dave Wood @liverpoolimages)

Whilst browsing through Twitter the other evening, I came across a photo posted by Dave Wood of the Greenwich Riverside in 1946. More precisely, the photo features the old Telcon Works at Enderby's Wharf, which is nowadays the proposed site of a Cruise Ship Terminal, which would have been unimaginable in those days when London was a working, industrial city. It shows a glimpse of a busier and more industrialised Thames than we are now accustomed to as well as a fascinating panorama of part of the Greenwich Peninsula in the immediate post-war era, when the scars of the Blitz were fresh, both on the ground and no doubt in the memories of those who had experienced it first-hand.

The Telcon Works runs vertically almost along the dead centre of the photograph but a closer look at the image reveals bomb damage in the form of large gaps in the terraced housing, freshly repaired roofs and even from the air, the look of general decay, as well as large areas which were soon to fall under the demolition ball for industrial use and later for the construction of the A012 Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach.

The excellent Greenwich Heritage Centre has the LCC Bomb Damage Maps for the area and checking the 1946 photo against the relevant map, we can see that it is quite easy to match up the damage on the map with many of the scars on the photo.

The corresponding portion of the Bomb Damage Map (author's image from original held at Greenwich Heritage Centre)

The road running diagonally across the top left hand corner of the photograph is Tunnel Avenue and whilst this road is still largely extant, much of it has been swallowed and overshadowed by the A102. The houses at the top of the map are shaded in orange, which according to the colour coding system in use for them, indicates that the damage incurred was "General Blast Damage - Not Structural" and which would have been relatively easy to repair. Looking at the Civil Defence Incident Logs for the area, it is difficult to ascertain exactly when this damage occurred, given the frequency of the attacks on this part of Greenwich but given the fact that there is a large circle indicating a V-1 Flying Bomb hit, with the smaller circle of a V-2 nearby, it is possible that this was the blast from one, or both, of these weapons. The V-1 involved was the very first one to fall on the borough, indeed one of the first to fall on London - on 16th June 1944, whereas the V-2 concerned was the penultimate rocket to fall on Greenwich, on 9th March 1945, just two months before the end of the war in Europe. No casualties were reported for either incident, falling as they did on largely open ground.

The only other V-1 affecting the area shown in the photograph fell at the extreme bottom left hand corner of the image and was a far more serious affair. This occurred at 19:40 on 29th July 1944 and was reported as falling on the 'Towpath' near the 'Sea Witch' Public House in Morden Wharf Road. This resulted in two fatal casualties, 18 year old Ernest Tinton of Grenada Road, Charlton and Walter Saveall, 39 from nearby Azof Street. Interestingly, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission report Saveall as being a member of the Home Guard but it is unclear whether or not he was on duty at the time of his death. Nine others were sufficiently badly injured to be taken to St Alfege's Hospital. The area was, as could be expected, devastated by the blast and as well as the human casualties, the 'Sea Witch' pub, was lost forever. Local Historian Mary Mills wrote about the pub in her excellent Greenwich Peninsula History blog in 2013 and as she points out, had the pub survived, it would doubtless nowadays be enjoying a new lease of life given the prime location it once occupied.

The two roads running parallel to the Telcon Works are Mauritius Road and Azof Street. Nearly every property in these two roads seems to have been affected in some way. Most of the damage is marked in yellow, which means "Blast Damage - Minor in Nature", although there are some buildings shaded in light red indicating "Seriously Damaged - Repairable at Cost." The buildings do appear to be still standing in the 1946 photograph but it is difficult to see what sort of condition they are in, although in 2016, there are newer properties at this location on the map. In common with the entire locality, the area received the attention of the Luftwaffe on a regular basis during the Blitz, doubtless because of its proximity to the various industries strung out along the Thames. Most notably, the area attracted a large number of Incendiary Bombs during September and October 1940. Most of these were efficiently dealt with by ARP Wardens, the Auxiliary Fire Service and occasionally by members of the public defending their own homes but 14 Azof Street was reported as being damaged by fire on 11th September 1940, as was 63 Mauritius Road later in the Blitz, on 19th April 1941, when one of the occupants had to be treated at hospital. By this stage of the Blitz, the area seemed to be attracting High Explosive Bombs in the vicinity and whilst no direct hits are reported, number 80 Azof Street was seriously damaged on 1st November 1940 by such a bomb and the blast from similar weapons falling nearby was no doubt responsible for the lesser damage to the other properties in these two roads.

Enderby's Wharf in 2016 (Google Maps)

The road leading off to the right of Azof Street is Bellot Street, named after Joseph Bellot, the French Arctic explorer, who perished in mysterious circumstances in 1853 whilst searching for Sir John Franklin, who had disappeared on his own expedition in search of the Northwest Passage. This road, like the eponymous explorer, is shrouded in a certain amount of mystery. A close look at the 1946 photograph clearly shows some fairly catastrophic bomb damage, with 'prefabs' or some other type of temporary buildings appearing in the gaps left by the demolished houses. The Bomb Damage Map confirms this by showing several properties shaded in black, meaning "Total Destruction" and yet on the Incident Log, Bellot Street features only once, on 14th March 1944, with the explosion of an Anti-Aircraft Shell. Such an explosion could not possibly have caused the demolition of what looks on the map like 39 properties but nothing is mentioned. This level of damage could only realistically have been caused by either a Parachute Mine, or by a V-1 or V-2 weapon. The Incident Logs are usually a pretty good indicator of when and where bombs fell but just occasionally, being written up in the heat of the moment, things can go off the rails and this seems to be a case in point. One possible answer to the mystery lies on 9th September 1940 when an Unexploded Bomb is reported in Christchurch Way which is the road running parallel and beneath Bellot Street on the map. No further mention is made of this bomb, whether it was defused, or whether it subsequently exploded. This lack of further information might suggest that an error was made in the initial entry and that the UXB was in fact, in Bellot Street and that it did indeed explode. The only other possibility was the Parachute Mine that fell in the vicinity on 29th December 1940 and is reported as 'Dyson House, Ship & Billet P.H. and 28 Commerell Street.' This spreads the net pretty widely but seeing as the majority of the fatalities emanated from Dyson House (10 from this location), it does seem unlikely that the blast affected Bellot Street whilst leaving buildings in between still standing. We shall possibly never know the answer but the former of the two theories put forward seems the most plausible.

Christchurch Way is the road running at the bottom of Mauritius Road and Azof Street and shows some fairly serious damage on the map, with a long stretch in light red "Seriously Damaged - Repairable at Cost", with similar levels of damage in adjoining Derwent Street, along with some black "Total Destruction" and an area of green indicating a "Clearance Area." As before, the damage in September and October 1940 seems to have been caused more by Incendiaries, with one report on 18th September 1940 stating that "every street in the district" was affected. It must have been a nightmarish scene for those attempting to fight the numerous fires lit by these innocuous looking but deadly bombs. A High Explosive bomb on 1st November 1940 caused serious damage at the Azof Street end of Christchurch Way, whereas a further HE on 17th September seems to be the culprit for the damage at the junction with Derwent Street. 

The roads running at the top of the 1946 photograph also suffered their fair share of damage. The thoroughfare running across the top of the Telcon Works and intersecting Tunnel Avenue is Blackwall Lane and the first road running off this immediately after the green space at Tunnel Avenue is Lenthorpe Road. There is a large empty space both in the photograph and also marked in black on the Bomb Map. This building was destroyed in the early hours of 19th September 1940 by a High Explosive bomb, which not only demolished the building but which ruptured the gas and water main supplies for the area. There was one casualty resulting from this incident but fortunately not a fatality. The next turning along is Glenister Road and it was here, on the  afternoon of 17th October 1940, that a more serious incident occurred. Another High Explosive bomb caused the destruction of numbers 27-35 Glenister Road as well as seriously damaging several others. The destruction is duly marked in black on the map as well as a large swathe of purple, indicating that these properties were "Damaged Beyond Repair." More serious was the human cost, with two fatal casualties, both of whom were children; Ronald Rose, 12 years old of 31 Glenister Road and 4 year old Ronald Finch of 19 Glenister Road. A further 14 people were seriously injured and taken to St Alfege's Hospital. Closer inspection of the 1946 photograph reveals the bomb damaged sites to have been cleared and replaced by Nissen Huts or similar temporary housing.

This part of Greenwich, in common with the rest of London, was to face many years of rebuilding war damage, so-called 'Slum Clearance', demolition due to the 1960s mania for road building and coming into the present day, more development due to that scourge of modern London - "Luxury Apartments." The Google Maps image, when compared to the 1946 photograph and the Bomb Damage Maps, show the Greenwich Peninsula vastly changed, although not perhaps totally out of all recognition to a 1940s resident who was transplanted into the area in 2016. Whether he or she would prefer the modern version has to remain a matter for conjecture!

Unpublished Sources:

Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich Civil Defence Incident Logs 1939-45 - Greenwich Heritage Centre

LCC Bomb Damage Maps for Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich - Greenwich Heritage Centre

Internet Sources:

Commonwealth War Graves Commission 

Dave Wood

Greenwich Peninsula History