Splinters, Shrapnel and London's 'Honourable Scars'

Steve pointing out the splinter damage on General Wolfe's statue (Sam Dorrington, Surrey Photographer)

For clients taking one of my Blitz walks, the enjoyment and interest comes in many forms. For some, it is the aspect of walking the ground and imagining just what it was like to be in London, or any other town or city when the bombs were falling, whilst for others, it is the wonderment of seeing the 'then and now' perspectives to be gained by comparing the present day view with that of some seventy years ago. One aspect that does seem universally popular however, is when at various points along a given route, the 'props' appear. These period artefacts really help to bring the walks alive and the fact that people can touch and feel something from the period helps them to better understand the subject matter being discussed at that particular 'stand' on the walk.

One set of 'props' in particular always arouse a particular fascination - this is the shrapnel fragments. The fascination is always a mixture of interest in finally handling the stuff that is so often mentioned in personal accounts, in documentaries and books as well as an appalled understanding as to what this stuff that can easily scar solid masonry could actually do to the human body.

With the final bomb sites in London and elsewhere finally now built upon, the splinter and shrapnel scars left on many buildings are perhaps the remaining most tangible reminder of the daily ordeal that London and Londoners, as well as many other towns and cities endured eighty years ago and sometimes from the First World War too.

The author's shrapnel fragments from a British anti-aircraft shell (Author's photo)

Before going any further, perhaps we should examine the derivation of the word 'shrapnel' and how it has passed into everyday usage.

In 1784, Lieutenant General Henry Shrapnel, of the Royal Artillery, perfected what he called "spherical case" ammunition, which was basically a hollow cannon ball, filled with musket balls which was designed to explode in mid-air over concentrations of enemy soldiers. This first anti-personnel weapon was demonstrated in 1787 at Gibraltar and was adopted by the British Army. By 1803, they had evolved into an elongated shell that was christened as the "Shrapnel Shell" and continued to be manufactured with little basic change, until the end of the Great War. The name stuck and by the Second World War, Henry Shrapnel's surname had become the generic description for any bomb or shell fragments.

This writer is lucky enough to possess several such fragments, all of which were discovered on the Thames foreshore in Greenwich by the excellent Nicola White of Tide Line Art and which are invaluable 'props' to my walks.

These pieces take many forms; first we have the shell fragments, which in this case come from the driving bands of British 3.7" anti-aircraft shells. Modern gun barrels are "rifled" with helical grooves that are machined on the interior bore of the gun barrel and at the base of a shell is a brass or copper alloy band with corresponding grooves that engage with those inside the gun barrel, thus causing the shell to rotate upon firing.

People sometimes overlook the fact that apart from the fragments from German bombs, there was a spirited anti-aircraft barrage emanating from London's defences and whilst in 1940, it has to be said that this fire was largely ineffectual, it did help boost the morale of the beleaguered Londoners, who felt that there was at least some opposition being generated to the unseen night time raiders. Of course, the theory of "What goes up, must come down" applied and as well as being peppered with bomb splinters, those who had reason to be out on the streets during a raid had to contend with this added British generated hazard.

Spent British 0.303" bullets (Author's photo)

Another similar item in my possession is a collection of spent bullets. In 1940, the Battle of Britain was raging overhead and some of the Luftwaffe's early daylight raids over London were fiercely contested by the RAF's Hurricanes and Spitfires. Many of the dogfights took place over London itself and whilst most civilians wisely took cover, there were many who watched these deadly duels taking place over their own homes and workplaces. The daylight battle over London culminated on September 15th with the Luftwaffe suffering heavy losses. At the time, the Air Ministry claimed that 185 German aircraft (of 201 bombers and approximately 530 fighters deployed) had been destroyed. The actual figure was 56 destroyed but still represented a major defeat for the Luftwaffe. Combined with earlier heavy losses, the German high command decided to switch their attacks on London and other British cities to night-time area bombing methods.

The bullets that I have are from British 0.303" calibre Browning machine guns, which were the standard armament of the Hurricane and the Spitfire, the versions of these iconic fighters in use during the Battle of Britain each being equipped with eight of these weapons. Nicola also kindly (and unwittingly) gave me two live rounds, which were promptly and safely disposed of!

Neil Bright's bomb splinter (Author's photo)

Then of course, we have the pieces that come from German bombs, more correctly described as splinters rather than shrapnel. Neil Bright, formerly of this parish, is the owner of a fearsome fragment from a German bomb, which is roughly the size of the palm of my hand. The prospect of a fragment of this size striking a person simply does not bear thinking about. There are many similar pieces on display in museums, at home and abroad. The church of St Edmund, King & Martyr is perhaps unique in containing splinters from a bomb that was actually dropped on the building by a German Gotha aircraft in 1917 and which fell through the roof. Not only are pieces of the bomb still on display inside the church but the entry point was converted into a window, located in the roof!

Bomb fragments at St Edmund, King & Martyr Church in the City of London (author's photo)

The entry point of the bomb at St Edmund, King & Martyr (author's photo)

The museum at the Royal Hospital Chelsea goes one better by having a complete bomb on display, in this case a 250 kg HE bomb which was one of three that fell in the grounds of the Infirmary on 16 October 1940, all of which failed to explode.

Unexploded 250 kg bomb on display at Royal Hospital, Chelsea (author's photo)

In Hamburg, two museums in that city display bomb splinters of impressive proportions; the Bunker Museum at Hamm has a substantial fragment of a British 250 lb bomb found in the immediate area when clearing the ground prior to the opening of the museum. The thought of this scything through the air is truly frightening. The museum in the crypt of the Nikolai Kirche also has some large splinters on display, as well as some complete bombs, again of the unexploded variety.

British 250 lb bomb fragment at Hamburg Bunker Museum (author's photo)

Bomb fragments at the Mahnmal St Nikolai, Hamburg (author's photo)

Unexploded RAF 250 lb bomb at the Mahnmal St Nikolai (author's photo)

Today, many buildings in London still display the "Honourable Scars" of their Wartime past, amongst them General Wolfe's statue in Greenwich Park, St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City of London, St Clement Danes Church in The Strand, Lord Clyde's statue in Waterloo Place as well as Edward VII's equestrian statue in the same location. Other buildings still bearing their scars are St Paul's Cathedral and the Victoria & Albert Museum, whose pockmarks are accompanied by a helpful plaque, which explains what these marks are and why they remain unrepaired. The Guards' Memorial also proudly displays splinter damage as do humbler structures such as the abutments of a railway bridge across Blackfriars Road and buildings in London Street, near Paddington Station.

Wartime scars on St Clement Danes Church (Author's photo)

Damage to the base of Lord Clyde's statue in Waterloo Place (author's photo)

All of these, as well as others serve to remind present day civilians here in London and elsewhere what our forebears had to endure during the dark days of the Second World War.



Printed Sources:

Battle of Britain Day: 15 September 1940 - Dr Alfred Price, Sidgwick & Jackson 1990
The Narrow Margin - Derek Wood with Derek Dempster - Tri Service Press 1990

What Still Remains

This article first appeared in the very early days of this blog back in November 2011. I thought it worthwhile to update it slightly, correct some of the grammar and to post a few additional images. As always, the photographs used in this piece are my property and MAY NOT be reproduced anywhere without my express written permission.

Shelter Sign in Frankham Street, Deptford (author's photo)

As someone who frequently guides walks around the bombed areas of our capital city and who frequently studies this aspect of our wartime past, I'm often asked what clues of London’s wartime past remain visible. The answer is that perhaps surprisingly, there is still evidence to be seen - not exactly plentiful but certainly still out there if one uses one’s eyes, knows where to look or has the occasional piece of luck. Sometimes, it can be it a tip-off from a friend or occasionally one can blunder across a little gem by accident

Finding these pieces of our wartime heritage using one’s own detective skills is half of the fun, so it would not be right to spill the beans about everything that remains and unlike some of the so-called experts out there, I certainly does not profess to know about everything that still remains. For those that wish to make their walk to work or school, around their local neighbourhood or simply a stroll around a much loved area, a little more interesting, here is a guide to the sort of thing that can still be spotted by the discerning eye.

Splinter damage at St Clement Danes Church (Author's photo)

Probably the most striking evidence of London’s bomb strewn past are the “honourable scars” worn by many buildings in the capital caused by bomb splinters. Sometimes and incorrectly referred to as shrapnel, this now generic term comes from the name of Colonel Henry Shrapnel. Whilst he was still a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in 1784, he invented on his own initiative, a hollow cannon ball, filled with shot that after firing, burst in mid air, thus spreading the shot over the unfortunate soldiers beneath. This first crude form of anti-personnel weapon, when formally adopted by the British Army in 1803 was immediately christened the Shrapnel Shell and whilst during the Second World War, neither side used this sort of weapon against either civilians or military, any sort of bomb or shell fragments were also given the Colonel’s name.

So it is that many buildings in London still bear scars caused by this terrifying by-product of bombing. Some of the better known examples can be found at St Clement Danes Church in the Strand, the General Wolfe Statue in Greenwich Park, Waterloo Place in Westminster and perhaps best known, the Victoria & Albert Museum in Exhibition Road, which even has a helpful commemorative plaque explaining what the damage is, how it was caused and why it has been left unrepaired. There are many other examples of this sort of damage to be found right across London and it is probably the most vivid reminder to be seen of our wartime past. It also provides ample food for thought. If pieces of white hot steel, flying through the air at massive speed can cause the sort of damage to solid masonry that can be seen today, what it could do to the vulnerable human frame does not bear thinking about. If one does think about it, the bravery of the Air Raid Wardens, the Fire Brigade personnel, Police, Ambulance and other Civil Defence workers, both men and women exposed to this lethal barrage, defies belief.

Shelter sign on St John's Estate, Bermondsey (Author's photo)

Whilst out walking, look for the tacit signs of damage; the replacement brickwork around windows, the lighter coloured masonry that even after almost eighty years, still hasn’t quite blended back in with the original, or the most tell-tale sign of all, a terrace of Victorian or Edwardian houses that is abruptly interrupted with a more recent building before resuming its original progression. These are all sure signs of bomb damage, not a dramatic memorial to the Blitz, but a memorial nevertheless. A closer examination of Civil Defence Incident Logs for the area concerned will usually prove one’s suspicions correct and will often reveal that on the site in question, people perished in the own homes. Each piece of repaired damage or replacement building is often therefore a mute memorial to times gone by.

Less widespread, but still visible in places are the painted Air Raid Shelter Signs. The Wartime lead-based paint was surprisingly durable, although with the passage of seventy-odd years, even the hardiest of these signs are starting to look their age now. In some cases, it is the paint used to obliterate the sign which has worn off, thus re-exposing them to public view long after they became obsolete. For some reason, there is a plethora of these Shelter signs in southeast London, with Deptford in particular, being the Shelter Sign Capital of London. Quite why London SE8 has so many of these surviving signs is a bit of a mystery; perhaps it is because (with all due respect to the area) it has escaped serious redevelopment until recently, perhaps it is just good luck. Whatever the reason, we can only hope that with the rediscovered interest in our Wartime past, some or all of these signs can be preserved. Already, one of these southeast London signs, in Jerningham Road, has been lost forever after the wall it was on was recently demolished as part of a housing scheme. Let us hope it is the last to be lost in this way, for these signs deserve to survive and act as a reminder of more troubled times. Apart from Deptford, there are Shelter signs to be found in Westminster, in Poplar and opposite the Oval Tube Station, although this sign has recently been partially covered with a street sign.

Shelter with intact blast wall at Croydon Cemetery (Author's photo)

From Shelter Signs, we go to the Air Raid Shelters themselves. As has been discussed on this blog in the past, Shelters came in many shapes and sizes, from the corrugated Anderson Shelter in the back garden to the communal ‘Morrison Sandwich’ shelter via the Deep Level Shelters in Central London. Examples of all these and more remain; most Anderson Shelters have long since been uprooted from their original back garden locations but some remain as sheds on allotments in odd parts of the capital. The communal brick and concrete shelters were christened ‘Morrison Sandwiches’ by some laconic Londoners, when some of the early examples of these structures showed a propensity to collapse at the merest hint of a nearby blast. The concrete slab base and roof of these shelters provided the bread and when the poorly keyed in and frankly Jerry-built brickwork was blown out by the blast of a near-miss bomb, the unfortunate occupants of these buildings provided the meat in the sandwich – enough said. Some of these shelters still survive; Fawe Street in Poplar, Battersea Park, Raynes Park and Norbury all possess surviving examples as does a splendid example complete with intact blast walls at Croydon Cemetery. The Deep Level Shelters were built from 1941 based on the experiences of the London Underground stations used as shelters; eight were built in total, four north of the Thames at Chancery Lane, Belsize Park, Camden Town and Goodge Street and four south of the River at Clapham North, South and Common as well as at Stockwell. Designed to take 8,000 people each in relative comfort and unrivalled safety, these shelters all survive and the ungainly concrete entrance structures can all still be seen at these locations.

EWS sign at the site of St Paul's School, Hammersmith (Author's photo)

Altogether a rarer specimen of wartime signage is that which signifies the “EWS” or Emergency Water Supply. This usually takes the form of a white or sometimes yellow rectangle with diagonal black stripes painted across it with the letters E W S in the lateral and lower quadrants, with the water capacity shown in the upper. These Emergency Water Supplies were large static water tanks, originally formed from the sealed basements of bombed out building, but later often purpose built tanks designed to augment the Fire Brigades’ supply of water should the regular water mains be damaged by bombing. A few of these signs still survive - there are two faded examples at the site of the former Wilson's Grammar School in Camberwell, another in Copperfield Street in Southwark, on Albert Embankment, at Boston Manor and at the former site of St Paul's School in Hammersmith.

Other sundry structures remain; Wardens’ Posts, Pillboxes, Anti-Tank defences, Anti-Aircraft Gun emplacements, rifle loopholes and the like remain across our capital. Putney Bridge Station is the home to a highly visible pillbox, Blackheath is the home to a set of Home Guard rifle loopholes and Epsom Downs is the home to a set of Tank Traps. These defences all formed part of the ‘Stop Lines’ formed to slow down and delay the advance of the advancing Germans in order to buy time for the British defenders to call up reserves. Fortunately, these defences were never put to the test but this fascinating and untried part of our wartime history can still be seen gently crumbling away in many parts of suburban London. Mudchute Park on the Isle of Dogs is the home to an almost complete Anti-Aircraft emplacement. Wardens’ Posts are rarer creatures although one or two others are still extant, with extant examples still to be found in Blackheath, Blackfen and Barnes amongst other places.

Putney Bridge Station pillbox (Author's photo)

Another evocative piece of wartime London still visible, albeit not being used for its original purpose and in declining numbers, is the once ubiquitous stretcher fencing. Mass produced in steel and wire mesh for the expected vast numbers of civilian casualties caused by German bombing, the ‘ARP’ stretcher was designed to be easily cleaned and re-used in clearing the dead and wounded. Many of these were never used and the end of the war saw hundreds of thousands of these simple pieces of equipment suddenly made redundant. In an early piece of recycling, an ingenious use was made of these stretchers in order to replace the wrought iron railings sacrificed for the war effort. There were also many new estates being built to replace the vast swathes of local authority housing destroyed in the Blitz. The stretchers provided a simple and effective solution and can still be seen in several locations across the London suburbs; Watergate Street in Deptford, Amherst Road in Hackney, the Springfield Estate in Stockwell are but three of the places that these can found.

Stretcher Fences in Marlborough Lane, Charlton (Author's photo)

Apart from these physical reminders, there are of course, an abundance of monuments which commemorate events, people and places connected with the wartime past, not only of this country’s wartime achievements but the Allied cause as a whole. So, across London we find plaques and statues galore commemorating such diverse personalities as the Polish General Sikorski, the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied invasion at Normandy, Dwight D Eisenhower, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Viscount Alanbrooke and General De Gaulle as well as many others. Plaques mark the spot of the first V-1 Doodlebug falling in Bow, the V-2 Long Range Rocket in Chiswick as well as the location of the Special Operations Executive, the Headquarters of the Norwegian Merchant Marine. There are also memorials to the fallen; across London there are still new plaques being erected by the charity Firemen Remembered marking the locations where members of the Fire Services fell in the course of performing their duties whilst under fire.

English Heritage Blue Plaque in Bow (Author's photo)

The reminders of our wartime past referred to above merely scratch the surface of what is still out there to be seen. As mentioned earlier, there is much enjoyment to be found in discovery and as always, any comments from the readership are welcomed. If you know of some aspect of London’s wartime heritage that can still be seen, then please feel free to share the information with us.

Ghosts of Wartime London

Shrapnel damage in London Street, Paddington

From time to time in the past, I have published various photographs showing some of what clues remain to be seen in London of it's wartime past; the last of these collections appeared in August 2013 so with the start of our regular scheduled walking season just around the corner, it is probably time for some more. Unless stated otherwise, all of the photos shown in the article were taken by the author and may not be reproduced without my express written permission.

Honourable Scars in London Street

Shrapnel scars can be seen all over London, sometimes in some unlikely and out of the way places and an instance of this can be found in London Street, Paddington, alongside the railway station. I haven't had the chance to examine the incident log for the locality as yet but the area was heavily bombed during the First Blitz of 1940/41, so these pockmarks almost certainly date from this period. 

In nearby Sussex Gardens, we can see another reminder of the London Blitz, this time at the Parish Church of St James's, the crypt of which, in common with many churches in the capital, was used as an air raid shelter, in this case one capable of accommodating some two hundred people. The church also housed an Air Raid Wardens' Post and in October 1940, was severely damaged by a Parachute Mine which fell in nearby Barrie Street. The top sixty feet of the spire was destroyed and many of the stained glass windows were damaged or destroyed. Notwithstanding all of this damage, the church never closed, either as a place of worship or as a shelter from Hitler's bombs.

The replacement Baptistry Window includes a panel that features ARP Wardens and searchlights panning the London sky in recognition of the church's role during the Blitz.

Detail from the Baptistry Window at St James's Sussex Gardens

Another reminder of the Blitz located at a church is located at Christ Church in Blackfriars Road and takes the form of a cross inset into the lawn at the rear of the church. The helpful explanatory plaque tells us that on the night of 16th/17th April 1941, the church was struck by incendiary bombs and in the ensuing fires, the blazing cross atop the spire fell onto the grass and reputedly etched the shape of the crucifix into the lawn, where it is now marked by white paving slabs; a simple but effective memorial to the second heaviest raid of the Blitz, which became known to Londoners simply as "The Wednesday."

The mark made by the burning cross at Christ Church, Blackfriars Road

During the Blackout, all manner of street furniture including kerb stones, lamp standards, bollards and even trees were painted with black and white stripes so as to provide a measure of a visual aid during the blackout. Surviving examples of these are now extremely rare but some can still be seen at the old Woolwich Arsenal site in southeast London on the steps of one of the surviving buildings.

White painted "Blackout" steps at Woolwich Arsenal

In my previous articles on surviving relics of wartime London, quite a few shelters have been mentioned but one that didn't get published last time around is this shelter, located at West Kensington Underground Station. This station is located on the District Line and as many Londoners will know, this is one of the earlier parts of the system, constructed using the 'Cut and Cover' system of tunnelling, which leaves the lines relatively close to the surface and therefore not suitable like the deep level 'tubes' for use as Air Raid Shelters. Indeed, West Kensington Station is actually on the surface, so the shelter at this station had to be purpose built. This shelter is not visible to the public and can only be viewed by appointment, so I was extremely lucky to take this shot a number of years ago. 

Entrance to the shelter at West Kensington Station

A more unusual reminder of wartime London can be found at the erstwhile Blewcoat School in Caxton Street, Westminster. Opened as a school in 1709, the building remained in this use until 1920, when it was taken over by the National Trust and used by them until quite recently as a gift shop. Now in use as a wedding shop, during the wartime years, the building saw somewhat more mundane use as a warehouse and was latterly used by the US Army for storing field equipment. Like all military establishment, however lowly, sentries were posted and an indication of the levels of boredom encountered whilst guarding a warehouse can be seen today in the shape of bayonet marks made by the sentries in the brickwork beneath the window frames. There is also other graffiti of the period that survives but you will have to come along on my Westminster at War walk in order to view this!

Bayonet marks left by bored US Army sentries

We close this brief look at wartime remnants by taking a look at the Greenwich Foot Tunnel which was constructed between 1899 and 1902, opening to the public in August of that year to provide a free and reliable method of commuting from south of the Thames to the then busy docks and wharves on the Isle of Dogs. Whilst the main part of the tunnel is obviously quite deep beneath the Thames, either end runs at a more shallow depth beneath the foreshore and in 1940, during a low tide period, the northern end of the tunnel was pierced by a bomb. The hurried repairs were formed from a thick steel and concrete inner lining to the existing tunnel which substantially reduces the diameter for a reasonably short distance and this repair can still be seen to this day.

Bomb damage repairs to Greenwich Foot Tunnel

There are many more reminders to be seen of our Wartime past and next time we shall take a look at some of the memorials and monuments to this period in our history.

Footprints of The Blitz (4)

In the last edition of this occasional series, we took a look at the surviving air raid shelters that can still be found in London, whilst previously we have examined shelter signs that are still extant more than seventy years after they were first painted. Today, we return to the subject of signage as well as those buildings in London which still bear the 'honourable scars' of war in the form of shrapnel damage, which act as a lasting reminder of the deadly nature area bombing; if shrapnel could damage solid masonry in such a spectacular fashion, the prospect of what it can do to the human body does not bear thinking about.

Apart from shelter signs, one aspect of wartime London that can still be found by the patient detective, are the 'EWS' Signs, signifying the one time site of an Emergency Water Supply. These were effectively temporary dams to augment the supply of water to the fire services and proved invaluable in the event of water mains being severed by bomb damage, as frequently happened during the Blitz. These emergency supplies took three basic forms - firstly from natural or man-made waterways such as rivers or canals, or even swimming pools, of which both abound in London. This first sign which still survives on the Albert Embankment, alongside the Thames is simply adjacent to a small inlet of the Thames which actually stretches beneath the main road and allows hoses to be dipped into the river at high tide and across a short section of the foreshore at low tide. A mud filter would have been required to stop the supply silting up but apart from that precaution, a ready made supply was always available.

EWS at Albert Embankment (author's photo)

The second location for these emergency supplies was in the basements of bombed out buildings, of which by the winter of 1940-41, there were plenty to be found. These basements were exposed after the rubble of the bombed building had been removed and were then sealed with bitumen, concrete or other suitable material and following this work, all that was required was to fill the space with water and the fire services thus had immediate access to a large capacity supply. One such supply was to be found at the site of the former Surrey Theatre, a former well known Music Hall venue at St George's Circus, near the Elephant & Castle. On the night of May 10th/11th 1941, the last night of the Blitz but also the heaviest raid of the entire war, this EWS was the scene of one of the worst tragedies to affect the wartime London Fire Service. The raid started with a heavy fall of both HE and incendiaries at the Elephant and the immediate surrounding area. Soon, the fires were out of control and the hard pressed firefighters on the scene were faced with what was known in the trade as a conflagration. Shattered water mains made their task even harder and hose relays were started from Manor Place Baths, the Surrey Theatre and also another nearby 5,000 gallon dam. All of these required relays of hoses to run a distance of around 800 yards along the streets to the scene of the main fires at the Elephant & Castle and not only required firefighters at the 'business end' tackling the flames but also needed men on the spot to ensure that the supplies remained uninterrupted. Such was the intensity of the fires and the number of hoses being used, that the 5,000 gallon supply was exhausted inside five minutes, which brought the firefighting to a temporary standstill until fresh supplies could be connected. Just as the pumps were being connected at the Surrey Theatre, a bomb fell here too, killing seventeen firefighters from the London Fire Brigade, as well as from the London and Mitcham Auxiliary Fire Service. Today, the Surrey Theatre is but a distant memory but a plaque erected at the site by the excellent charity Firemen Remembered, acts as a permanent reminder of the ultimate sacrifice made by these seventeen men in the dark days of the Blitz.

Plaque at the site of the Surrey Theatre EWS (author's photo)

The third type of EWS were large man made coffer dams usually erected in existing open spaces, such as parks, school playgrounds or later in the war on cleared bomb sites. Once again, some of these signs are still extant and can be seen by the discerning eye. One such group of signs can be found in Camberwell Church Street, where there are the remnants of three such signs, although one of these is extremely faded nowadays. Closer inspection of the best survivor of these signs shows in the top quadrant, the capacity of the former dam as being 5,000 gallons.

EWS Sign Camberwell Church Street (author's photo)

In case anyone is wondering what one of these Emergency Water Supplies looked like, here is a shot of one in action located to the north of Blackfriars Bridge, in New Bridge Street. This one is a coffer dam example and is being simultaneously filled with fresh supplies of water whilst at the same time as feeding hose branches being used to fight a fire.

EWS New Bridge Street (author's collection)

From signs we move to scars - the scars left on London's buildings left by the ravages of war. Hitler's bombs did not respect the importance of buildings or structures. Those scars are today borne by noble buildings such as St Paul's Cathedral and other Wren designed places of worship, places of leisure and culture such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, statues of figures from Britain's mililtary past such as General James Wolfe and Lord Clyde to more humble but no less important edifices such as railway bridges, hospitals and railway offices. What links all of these structures is their having survived the worst that the Luftwaffe could throw at them. 

Some of the most vivid examples of shrapnel damage can be found at St Clement Danes Church, now the Central Church of the RAF but in 1941 a normal, if slightly grand, parish church on the edge of the City of London. Since 1910, it had been under the rectorship of the splendidly named Horation Pennington-Bickford and had survived the early stages of the Blitz relatively unscathed. On the night of 10th/11th May 1941, it's luck ran out and apart from a near miss from a high explosive bomb, Wren's beautiful 1685 church was soon ablaze from the incendiaries that rained down upon it. Across the road, Pennington-Bickford watched in tears as his beloved church burned and within a month, the old rector was dead, some said from a broken heart but undoubtedly due to the stress of seeing the destruction of his beloved church. In 1957, the church was rededicated as the Central Church of the RAF and is today a shrine to the RAF as well as the Commonwealth and Allied Air Forces, including the USAAF.

St Clement Danes (author's photo)

Similar damage can be found on many buildings across London and is not confined to the City centre. The statue of General James Wolfe, victor of Quebec in 1759 has stood overlooking the Thames and his beloved Greenwich since 1930. The plinth of his statue bears the scars of a German bomb which exploded nearby in 1940. Some members of the Greenwich Park staff peddle an urban myth that the damage was caused by a German fighter strafing the roadway. This story, although swallowed over the years by many a tourist and not a few locals, is utter twaddle - the nearby heath was the site of a large battery of anti-aircraft guns as well as a balloon barrage and it would have taken a brave or foolhardy pilot to risk his life by recklessly flying low merely to machine gun a statue!

General Wolfe's plinth (author's photo)

There are many other examples of shrapnel damage to be seen across London and next time we shall take a look at some more of these as well as some other reminders of our capital's wartime history.

Published Sources:

The London Blitz: A Fireman's Tale - Cyril Demarne OBE, After The Battle 1991

The Lost Treasure of London - William Kent, Phoenix Press 1947