The piece below was written by me in 2009 for inclusion in my friend and guiding colleague Clive Harris's erstwhile 'Front Line London' website. Clive kindly mentioned this article recently on the Charlton Life forum and so suitably updated and with some additions, the article is reproduced below.
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| Spotter on duty at The Valley (Greenwich Heritage Centre) |
With a father who served in HM Forces, most of the time overseas and
a mother who worked at Woolwich Arsenal throughout the Second World War, it was
probably inevitable that I would have more than a passing interest in the
history of those times, although admittedly for some reason that I’ve never
quite been able to work out, my interest has always been slanted towards the
war at sea. Notwithstanding this, possibly because of hearing my Mother and her
friends talking about those days, interest in the home front, especially in my
own corner of south east London has never been too far from the surface.
These days, there aren’t too many visible signs of the war in SE7,
although with a bit of local knowledge and with a little research, it is quite
easy to get a good idea of what was bombed and what evidence remains.
The first place to start when researching an area is the local
authority’s archive to study the Civil Defence Incident Logs. Scandalously, in
the sixties and seventies, perhaps before the social history value of such
information was fully appreciated, some boroughs destroyed their records.
Fortunately the Royal Borough of Greenwich, as we should now call it, has an
excellent Heritage Centre in which is held the records of the old Metropolitan
Boroughs of Greenwich and Woolwich.
From a study of these logs, it can been seen that much of the
heaviest damage was done to what is now known as North Charlton - that is the
area at the bottom of Charlton Church Lane and bordering the Woolwich Road.
There were many factories in this area, especially between Woolwich Road and
the River and it was these that suffered repeatedly. Johnson & Phillips, British
Ropes, Harvey’s, Stone Manganese, Siemens, the Central Tram Repair Depot at
Rainton Road and many other local industries were all heavily bombed in
1940-41, as was the Woolwich Arsenal, where my late Mother had been working
since joining as a 16 year old in 1937. Despite working in what was arguably
the most dangerous place in London, she always felt safer once at work, rather
than chancing the public shelters that were the only option if the warning went
whilst travelling to work on the bus. She maintained until the end of her life that if the siren went as
she was crossing Beresford Square, as it did on more than one occasion, she
would always hurry up and get through the Arsenal Gates. This probably false feeling of safety was shared by many of the workers that I have spoken to subsequently.
The story as far as Charlton was concerned actually began before what is now viewed as the official start of the Blitz. On the 4th September 1940, St. Paul’s Church, which was located at
the junction of Charlton Lane and Fairfield Grove, received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb which
entered through the roof of the main building, completely destroying it. This
was something of a landmark, as it was the first church in London to be
destroyed in the War and the day following the incident, many thousands of
people came to view the ruins. Sadly, the novelty value of this occasion was to
wear off very quickly indeed. The gutted shell of the building remained until
after the war, but was then demolished and the land sold to the local council
for housing purposes. Today, the only clue to the existence of this landmark is
an unremarkable block of local authority flats, which bears the name of the
church which once stood on the site. This incident was covered more fully in this blog in
April 2010
Mum did have one lucky escape, which was on ‘Black Saturday’ 7th
September 1940, the first day of the Blitz. For reasons that she could not
later recall, her boss had given the Pay Office (where my Mother worked) a
Saturday off. This was a real bonus, because Saturdays were a normal working
day at that time. My Mother remembered spending much of her day off – from the
late afternoon onwards – in the Anderson Shelter of her parents’ home in Montcalm
Road, Charlton. When she reported for work on the following Monday, the whole
area where she worked, including her own office building as well as many of the
air raid shelters, had been destroyed.
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| The destroyed Charlton Station (Greenwich Heritage Centre) |
In Charlton, ‘Black Saturday’ also saw the railway line between
Charlton Junction Station (as it was then called) and Woolwich Dockyard completely
closed due to unexploded bombs. This pattern was followed many times during the
following two months, with the line being closed again on the 12th
September and again on the 20h, 24th and 25th
September, when Angerstein’s Wharf was struck, with four railway personnel
being killed. In October, the lines were again blocked due to bomb damage and
once again, Angerstein’s Wharf was struck by incendiary bombs. No evidence of
this damage is really apparent today, as most of the buildings were demolished
post-war. Jumping ahead in time, the Booking Office and ancillary buildings of Charlton
Station were completely destroyed on 23rd June 1944, when it received a direct
hit from a V-1 flying bomb, killing four civilians, including Mrs. Newick, the wife of the
signalman, who lived in the Stationhouse. As a result, the whole station was
demolished and remained as a collection of temporary buildings until 1967, when
the station was rebuilt into the style we see today.
The railway received one further blow, on 8th February
1945, when the signal box at the opposite end of the platform to the booking
hall, received extensive blast damage from a V-2 that exploded 400 yards away
from the building, although happily causing no casualties.
The familiar sights of London at war were already apparent in SE7
by the time the Blitz started in September 1940. Although there was no heavy
anti-aircraft battery in Charlton itself, my mother recalled a mobile gun that
used to drive along Canberra Road firing sporadically, which presumably did
little good, other than to give the impression to the general public that we
were fighting back, albeit in a small way. There was also a battery of 3.7”
guns on Blackheath, which again, at that stage of the war, would have been more
of a morale-boosting exercise than anything else. Charlton Park was the home of
one, possibly, two barrage balloons, which of course, were dotted liberally all
across London. In Canberra Road, number 106 received a near miss and severe
blast damage, which caused the building to be demolished and which now gives
one of the few clues to the Blitz still visible in SE7. The house was rebuilt to
a slightly different layout to the other undamaged houses, which still stands
out today. It was this blast that did the only lasting damage to the family
home in nearby Montcalm Road. Roof tiles were blown off, windows blown out and
the upstairs ceilings were all brought down. The evidence of post-war
rebuilding is still evident today, with the ceilings being reconstructed in a different
style to the originals.
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| Invicta Road School (Greenwich Heritage Centre) |
On November 14th 1940, the same night as the great raid on
Coventry, southeast London also suffered. In Charlton Park Lane, near the
junction with Shooters Hill Road, near to where Charlton Lido now stands, a
parachute mine fell and became entangled in trees. Fortunately, there was
sufficient time to evacuate the residents of the adjacent houses, before it
exploded some hours later, destroying several houses and causing severe blast
damage to many other properties.
By far
the worst incident in London on this night was in nearby Blackheath, when
Invicta Road School, then in use as a fire station for the Auxiliary Fire
Service received a direct hit from a Parachute Mine, killing twelve firemen and
three civilians. These two incidents were separated by a matter of minutes and
presumably the same aircraft dropped both of these mines.
Back in Charlton proper, The Village also attracted the attention
of the Luftwaffe, when the Bugle Horn public house and St. Luke’s Church also
received severe blast damage. The stained glass windows of the church were
almost completely destroyed and what is now the Lounge Bar of the pub was
severely damaged. This was not rebuilt until after the war, and whilst today
the building looks much as it ever did from the outside, a closer inspection of
the interior of this bar reveals it to be a pastiche of the original.
Once the First Blitz of September 1940 to May 1941 was over,
Charlton in common with the rest of London enjoyed something of a respite with
only sporadic raids until the ‘Little Blitz’ of late 1943 to the spring of 1944.
Then in June 1944 came the Allied invasion of Europe and the war-weary citizens
of Charlton perhaps thought that the end was in sight. It was at this relatively
late stage of the war that Londoners were subjected to their final and arguably
worst ordeal in the form of the terror weapons – the V-1 Flying Bombs and later
the V-2 Rockets.
The first V-1 in London fell in Bow on 13th June 1944 but the
boroughs of Greenwich and Woolwich were spared until three days later, when the
first of many of these weapons fell in both boroughs. Greenwich’s first fell
harmlessly on allotments in Tunnel Avenue, Greenwich, whilst the first ‘buzz
bomb’ in Woolwich fell in Heavitree Road, Plumstead causing seven fatalities.
The V-1’s fell regularly thereafter in both boroughs, with the casualties
mounting steadily. The V-1 assault fell away and then stopped altogether by
early September 1944 when the Allied armies overran the launching sites in the
Pas de Calais. Another brief respite followed but then on 8th September 1944, a
house in Staveley Road, Chiswick was obliterated without warning. At first, the
authorities tried to calm the populace by informing them that the explosion was
caused by an exploding gas main but when the explosions continued, they finally
had to come clean and tell Londoners that yet another new weapon was being used
against them. Thereafter, some of the more cynical Londoners christened the
rockets ‘flying gas mains!'
Like everywhere in London, as well as many other places in England
and indeed liberated Europe, the V-2s caused havoc in Greenwich. The first one
to fall in the borough also proved to be the worst. This was on 11th November
1944 when the Brook Hotel in Shooters Hill Road was completely destroyed by a
direct hit. There were twenty nine fatalities, many of whom were passengers on
a number 89 bus which happened to be passing when the missile fell. The pub was
rebuilt after the war but subsequently closed; the building however is still
extant as a small supermarket. Most buildings that suffered from the attentions
of these rockets were completely destroyed but there is one building in Charlton,
which although rebuilt after the war, still shows the extent of the damage
caused. The building is Charlton House, the splendid Jacobean manor house that
greets visitors to Charlton arriving from the direction of Blackheath, which
suffered a near miss from a V-2 on the evening of 25th January 1945. The entire
north eastern wing of the building was destroyed, and although the post-war
rebuilding work was painstakingly done, unfortunately shortages of materials
and perhaps a low budget caused the wrong colour brickwork and stone to be used
and the rebuilt area can still be clearly seen, giving the present day viewer
some idea of the extent of the damage caused.
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| Johnson & Phillips in March 1945 (Greenwich Heritage Centre) |
The final V-2 incident of the war as far as Charlton was concerned
occurred on 9th March 1945, barely two months before the end of the war in
Europe, when the Johnson & Phillips factory, which had suffered so much
during the First Blitz received another direct hit, this time on the Cable Shop causing one fatal casualty. The last V-2 of the entire war fell in Orpington
on 27th March 1945 causing one final fatality but with the Allied armies
closing in on the shattered remains of the Third Reich, the final surrender of
the Nazis on the 8th May 1945 meant that London and Londoners could at last
begin to return to their peacetime routines.
To end on a brighter note, the final word must go to an incident
which my late Mother remembered until the end of her life. It was June 1944 and
her husband to be, Ron was on leave, having just returned from nearly four
years service overseas in North Africa. The air raid siren sounded and both Mum
and Dad began to walk down the garden to the shelter. As they were doing this, a
V-1 could be seen and heard overhead. The engine then stopped and instead of
running, my Mum made some comment about the engine having stopped and just
stood there watching. Ron told her in no uncertain terms to get down, whereupon
he pushed her to the ground and she ended up face down in the dirt with a muddy
face.
Mum was uncertain where the V-1 fell, but given the chronology, it is
just possible that it was the same weapon which fell on Charlton Station as
described above.
She still laughed about this incident some 60 years on, as apart
from the muddy face, it was the first time that my Dad had ‘sworn’ at her, apparently
having called her a “Silly Cow” when she was gawping at the Doodlebug!
Unpublished Sources:
Author's family recollections
Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich ARP Incident Log
Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich ARP Incident Log
