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.