Denholme Road, Paddington - 8th September 1940

 

Denholme Road is a tree-lined street of predominantly three-storey houses in West Kilburn, formerly in the London borough of Paddington).

In the map above, Denholme Road is flagged in red in the top left corner, with central London in the bottom right corner.

On the evening of Sunday 8^th September 1940, Elizabeth Bernard had walked the ten minutes from her home at 83 Walterton Road to number 23 Denholme Road to meet her friend, Mary Hart. 

They would have had a lot to discuss – the docklands area in the east end had been the target for the first mass daylight bombing attack on London the previous day and repeat bombings during the night had kept the fires burning.  Aged 77 and 69 respectively, both were children of the Victorian age, and they must have looked back to the days of peace and British supremacy when an attack on London would have been unthinkable.  Elizabeth had spent a lot of her adult life in the east end so would know the areas bombed.  They might even have known about a local man, Alfred Woolgar, who had been killed when RAF Croydon was bombed a few weeks before; he had lived at home with his parents at 52 Fordingley Road (Elizabeth passed the street on her way there).

Mary rented a room from the Wallises, James (a retired policeman) and Amelia, aged 59 and 52.  They had lived there for about thirty years since they were married, interrupted only by James’s service in the 1914 to 1918 War when he joined the military police and was posted to Egypt.

They might have noticed a neighbour, 19-year old Constance Brown returning home from a lecture on air-raid precautions; she lived with her parents at number 25, on the corner of Macroom Road.  (In the photo at the start of this post, numbers 23 and 25 would have been on the right hand side, where the very obviously newer block of flats stand.)

At 9.50, Elizabeth and Mary were in the hallway of number 23, maybe as Elizabeth was leaving.  The Wallises were sitting at a table.  Upstairs, the Clarkes, Wilfred and Dorothy, had got their baby son to sleep.  In Constance Brown’s words, “About 9pm there was a noise like a train rattling down, then a shrill whistle and a bang, then we went up in the air and down again.” 

This map shows the damage recorded to houses, the darker colour denoting more damage and black showing complete destruction:

The damage to the houses in Macroom Road suggests the bomb exploded at the rear of numbers 23 and 25 Denholme Road.

The Wallises were killed where they sat.  Upstairs, Mrs Clarke heard the sound of the bomb falling and threw herself across the cot but in vain: both her legs were broken by falling rubble and baby Derek died.  Also at number 23, 15-year old Moira Smith died in her bed; she had been evacuated to Exeter at the outbreak of the war and had just returned home to her parents, Harold and Rosetta.

In the hallway of number 23, Elizabeth Bernard and Mary Hart were covered in dust and some rubble.  Mary was helped out by two men, probably neighbours, but Elizabeth was part-buried and not seen.

Just round the corner at 119 Fernhead Road an off-duty policeman, Richmond Rickards (a 35-year old Welshman), heard the explosion and ran to the scene.  He may have known Constance’s father, Clarence Brown, or James Wallis, both in the police reserves.  On arriving, he heard groans and cleared enough rubble to get into the front passage and found Elizabeth, injured but conscious.  As he carried her out, another bomb fell nearby causing the parts of the building that were still standing to collapse.  He carried Elizabeth to shelter, then returned to help again.

In the wreckage next door, Constance Brown remembered, “I did not lose consciousness and was covered by rubble and pinned down by a dining chair, which had lost its seat and was over my shoulders.”  She seems to have been in a pocket within the rubble.  “The gentleman from the ground floor was injured beside me, but we couldn’t move to help each other.”  (Based on the 1939 register this would probably be Ernest Johns, 24, a delivery van driver.)

It was probably four to five hours later (Constance said “after what seemed ages”): “I can remember the sounds of men digging and then calling to us.  When the rescue gang got nearer, they told us to cover our heads.  I put my arms up, and a brick smashed into my elbow, and my face and hair were covered in glass ...  Then the rescuers said they were going to lower flasks of water on a rope.  I managed to catch one but could not get my head back to drink because the back of the dining chair made putting my head back impossible.  Eventually I was released, and to add insult to injury the man assisting me said, “You’ll be alright now, son.”  Not very flattering for a 19-year-old girl.”

It was 5.30 the next morning when she was rescued.  Four people were killed, 19 injured.  For Constance the sadness was not quite yet over: “We lost our home and all our belongings.  The hundredweight of coal we’d got in for the winter was looted, along with some unbroken moveable objects and clothing.”

Constance subsequently married (becoming Constance Blunsum) and died in Chelmsford in 2015.  Strangely her account does not mention her parents, other than her father’s occupation.

Richmond Rickards was awarded the British Empire Medal for bravery; there is a photo of him with his medal, but I am waiting permission to post it.  Strangely, the paperwork for his medal names him as Richard Rickards and gives his age as 26 rather than the correct figure of 36, but then states the correct home address and length of service in the police (15 years, which would not have been possible if he was 26).  He moved back to Wales in later life with his wife Edith and died in 1981.

Elizabeth Barnard was made of strong stuff.  She had survived the east end of London where three of her four children had died by the time she was 27 years old.  In her working life she had been a ‘month nurse’, the nurse who helped a mother with the new-born while they were ‘confined’ for the first month before she was widowed.  After being buried in rubble and rescued by PC Rickards she lived another eleven years, dying at the age of 88.

East Acton, 1st October 1940

 

In early 1939 as hopes faded that Hitler’s ambitions for territorial expansion could be appeased, local councils throughout the UK rushed to make preparations for shelters from air raids.  There was a strong belief that enemy aircraft could not be stopped (the bomber will always get through), that bombing attacks could kill tens of thousands each day, and that attacks would probably begin on the day war was declared. 

One of the solutions was to dig trenches in parks and other green urban areas, line them with wooden supports, and put a concrete slab on top.  Rather than being one big room, these would have had different arms or bays, the shape of a passage-way with benches on either side for sitting and electric lights; there was probably a simple toilet.  They were designed on the assumption raids would last a few hours, not all night and there was no ventilation or heating, so they tended to become cold, damp and smelly.  However, they could provide a shelter for hundreds of local people and no doubt drew on the experience of older local men digging trenches in France and Belgium just over twenty years earlier at a time when skilled builders were in short supply.

These photos show a trench shelter under construction in Hyde Park and the inside of a trench shelter.

One such trench system was dug on The Common in Action, just off Old Oak Common Lane.  (It is referred to in official documents as The Trenches, The Fairway).  People would have gone here when alerted by the air raid siren or may even have slept here overnight even when there was no siren by the evening.

As the night of Monday 30^th September 1940 passed into Tuesday morning, over 200 people were in the shelter.  The shelter staff were all ARP members.  Ben Hawes was in charge, a guard on London Underground trains from Old Oak Common Lane.  Assisting him were two trench marshals, sisters Gwendoline and Marjorie Jones from 10 Long Drive, also a few minutes’ walk away.

In this 2023 view The Common is at the bottom of the photo.  Long Drive runs horizontally at the top of the photo.  Taylor's Close is the oval shaped road in the top-left corner.  Old Oak Common lane runs vertically down the right hand side of the photo.

This sketch is from the BBC website and shows the same area in wartime (to interpret the numbers see this webpage https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/31/a8880131.shtml)

Approaching from the Thames Estuary, about 175 German bombers flew over London that might.  While they would have had targets, bomb-aiming was primitive and the Thames was probably the main navigation guide.  The target for those over Acton may have been the railway depot at old Oak Common (now home to Elizabeth Line trains).

At 05.22 a bomb dropped and exploded on or closer to the right-hand side of the trench shelters.  Gwen Clarke, aged 27 and a warehouse assistant, described what happened:

“We did not hear any sound.  I was about half way in the bay that was struck, when the lights went out and two girls on the left side and a boy on the right side were thrown across; also the end of the bay seemed to come towards us. 

I used my torch and found some people struggling among the collapsed wall.  Telling the people in the shelter to stay where they were my sister and I picked up three people near us and laid them on the benches. 

While my sister rendered first aid, I released two girls, a woman and two boys who were partly trapped, although I could hardly see for dust.  We got them near the entrance for fear of further collapse of the walls.  I went back to where the people were trapped, but could do nothing but assure that help was on the way.  I then helped my sister with the injured. 

By this time some of the Services were arriving, so we handed our patients over to them.”

As rescue work continued, the Clark sisters made tea.  The case was reported by the District warden and the Clark sisters received commendations from the government for their work.

Gwendoline Clark was four years younger than her sister and did not marry, dying in 1957.  In Gwen’s account, Marjorie is the one tending the wounded and in the 1939 Register she seems to be recorded as a nurse at the North Middlesex Hospital in Edmonton.  The doubt is because the name is originally given as Marjorie B Jones but the surname has been amended to Clark.  At the time of the bombing she was living at 10 Long Drive with her parents and her occupation is described as domestic help (maybe her parents were inform?)  She had been a part-time warden for five months.  There is no trace of her in records after 1940.

Ben Hawes, the shelter marshal, was 46 at the time living at 155 Old Oak Common Lane with his wife Rose.  Six weeks after the bombing, on 12^th November, he was at his job as a guard for London Underground at Sloane Square Station when he was killed in a devastating bomb explosion with around 40 other people.

The people who died at The Common were in two family groups. 

Mary Maud Hersey had celebrated her 52^nd birthday three days ago.  She was in the trench shelter with at least three of her children, Ivy (aged 29), Cyril (19) and Olive (13).  We don’t know for certain that her husband, William Mike Hersey, or her other sons, William Henry (28) and Ronald (20), were there as well but as they were all listed in the 1939 Register at 162 Old Oak Common Lane it seems likely.

Alice Cooper was four past her 59^th Birthday, born in Stepney and living in Poplar.  At the time of the 1939 Register she was living in Swindon, and a family tree on ancestry.co.uk suggests this was because she had been evacuated with her daughter, 20-year old Alice Gertrude Cooper.  They lived with a widow, Mary Wrangham at 23 Bibury Road.  (In the 1939 Register two records at the same address are closed, were these also evacuees?)  Alice’s husband and two adult sons were recorded as living at 129 Campbell Road in Poplar (in modern terms by Devons Road DLR Station).  In the east end of London this would have been near the docks, a likely target for German bombing, so the evacuation made sense; the men stayed presumably because they were all in paid employment and could not afford to give that up.

Campbell Road around 50 years ago. 129, home of the Coopers on the right near the trees (only the railway bridge and possibly one of the trees survives today).

So, what were Alice and her daughter doing in Acton just over a year later?  It was common for people evacuated to want to return, but their address is given as 24 Taylors Close, just off Long Drive and a few minutes’ walk from The Common.  Why did they not move back to Campbell Road?  Possibly it was regarded as too dangerous – several residents of their street had been killed when a street shelter was bombed in Sutherland Road just over two weeks before, on the opening day of the daylight Blitz on London.  But were the whole family in Acton, with the men commuting back to their work (surely they could not afford two houses?) - were they also in the trench shelter but survived?  We have one clue.  Alice’s son, Albert Henry, died around a month later at Hammersmith Hospital (less than a mile away from The Common); while he is not recorded in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission register of civilian war dead, it is possible he was missed.

An ambulance in a bombed street: Ladywell Park, Lewisham

 

I chanced upon this photo, taken in the Ladywell area of Lewisham on 18 September 1940.  In common with most wartime photographs, other recorded details were excluded in case they helped the enemy.  But where was it?

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) holds the national register of civilians killed in the Second World War in the UK, at sea and overseas, including where they died.  From this I could see that on the 17^th September there were several incidents in Lewisham but the one that seemed the best match was in a street called Ladywell Park.

No street of that name now exists, but the 1940 edition of Bartholemews Reference Atlas of Greater London revealed it was a road off of Lewisham High Street (to the east) opposite to the junction with Ladywell Road.  (Later this was the sight of Ladywell Leisure centre, now demolished.)

In the background of the photo, at right angles to Ladywell Park, a building is visible with a distinctive pediment at the roofline.  Looking at Google Maps street view, it can be matched to the building still standing at 324 to 328 Lewisham High Street.

This is the sight of the junction with Ladywell Park as it looks today:

From the book “Red Alert” by Lewis Blake, a history of the blitz in south-east London, a parachute mine exploded at 11.30pm on Tuesday 17^th September.  This was a naval mine, about 6 feet long, dropped from a bomber at about 40 mph after the parachute opened.  After touching the ground, it had a timer to explode after 25 seconds and had been used for the first time in the UK on the previous night.  (For more information see https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30020471).  This is a painting of a mine falling in another incident:

This extract from the London County Council sows the damage done to Ladywell Park, black denoting complete destruction:

Blake says 25 people died in this incident although CWGC only lists 24 names.  These include

·         John Smart, a labourer, and four of his children at number 18

·         Richard Butler, a timberman, his wife, adult daughter, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren at number 16.  At the same address, George Johnson, a lorry driver, and two of his children.

·         At number 7, newly married Charles Lawrence, a compositor (typesetter) and his wife Kathleen.

·         At number 1, Mary White and her adult daughter Annie, who usually lived in Kentish Town with her father but was evidently visiting her mother at the time.

A common idea is that in the Blitz, Londoners slept in stations on the Underground but of course this depended on there being a station near you and that y could get a place.  Many people either chanced it at home, used a shelter in their garden, or used a public shelter in the street.  However, less than a week before at least 36 people had been killed in a public street shelter less than a mile from Ladywell Park, at Albion Way.  This might have deterred people from going to a similar shelter overnight.

The death toll could have been higher.  One of the rescuers, John Donno, a labourer, retrieved four people alive by crawling into the rubble of the houses.  He went back for a fifth person but a rubble fall knocked him out and he had to be rescued himself, awaking in hospital.  For this, he was awarded the George Medal, the highest award for civilian bravery.  Very little is known about John Donno.  Born on 18^th October 1884, he lived at 56 Laleham Road at the time, with his wife, Frances. Looking at the original photo again, we can perhaps imagine him crawling into the wreckage in the middle of the night

 

Here are two views of Ladywell Park, the first probably looking towards Lewisham High Street and the other looking towards Campshill Road:

The following aerial view shows the Lewisham URC Church on the corner of Courthill Road and Lewisham High Street in the bottom left, Lewisham High Street runs from left to right across the photo in the foreground.  Ladywell Park is the tree lined street running away from the camera on the right hand side and curving towards the centre of the photo:

This is an approximation to the same view today:

Finally, here is a close-up of the houses closest to the High Street: