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WW2 London Blitz - did the Nazis bomb your ancestors house?

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  • WW2 London Blitz - did the Nazis bomb your ancestors house?

    This is an interesting website for those who lived, or who had ancestors who lived in London during 1940-41. See exactly where the bombs came down:

    Explore the London Blitz through our website. Discover London during WW2 bombing raids, exploring maps, images and memories. The Bomb Sight web map and mobile app reveals WW2 bomb census maps between 7/10/1940 and 06/06/1941, previously available only by viewing them in the Reading Room of The National Archives.

  • #2
    Three years before I was born. One bomb fell a couple of streets away from my grandparents' house.
    Uncle John - Passed away March 2020

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    • #3
      My mother, aunts, uncles and grandparents lived in Wellington Road, Forest Gate and they had bombs drop near the street a few times. For years afterwards my mother used to hide in the cupboard under the stairs because she thought a thunderstorm was the bombs coming over, even when the family moved away from London.

      Funny thing was though, if my sister was at her friends house a few streets away from where we lived when there was a thunderstorm, she sent me to get her.

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      • #4
        We were bombed out of Clydebank, and subsequently moved to a village in South Wales. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, my mother would take us all upstairs, and we sat and sang hymns until it was all over. I thought this was wonderful, and really loved thunder storms, (and still do). My younger sister (younger by five and a half years), realised why mum did this, because she was frightened, and connected the noise of the storm to the noise of the bombs. My sister still hates storms and closes the house up and shuts the curtains - anything to try to get away from the noise even after all these years.

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        • #5
          St. Helier Hospital in Wrythe Lane, Hackbridge was bombed - not sure of date but it had a big red cross on top of it (a white building) to warn the enemy it was a hospital - it was apparently used by them as a direct line over Biggin Hill on their way out after a bombing run and they got rid of their bombs that were unused as they left. It was also a direct landmark on the way in to London. It was the large nurses home that was bombed - there were injuries and a death.

          Sue

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          • #6
            MiL's house in Silvertown (London docks) was bombed in the Blitz. FiL (living in the leafy suburbs) also had his home destroyed by a parachute mine while he was in it, although he escaped with just a cut head. All in all it's a miracle they survived to produce my OH!

            A few decades earlier my g-grandparents lived in Alkham Road, Stoke Newington, where one of the first bombs used in the first world war landed.

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            • #7
              we didn't live in London, but Dad was working down there for a short while in early 1940.

              As a result of his landlady telling him to go round the house and unlatch all the windows as soon as the sirens went, so they could move in the window frames .....................

              we were the only house in about a 1 mile radius of the bomb that fell in Oldham, Lancashire on Christmas Eve 1944, destroying a row of about 6 houses and killing over 20 people.

              Our house was less than half-a-mile from where the bomb fell ............... and I can remember sitting on the stairs to the basement sobbing my heart out as my grandmother tried to comfort me.

              I also remember looking out of the front window, and seeing the street covered with shattered glass, with grandparents' little fox terrier picking his way through it from their house across the street. They hadn't been able to find him when they came over to ours after the siren went. They had lost all their windows, so he had been able to jump into the back yard, and through the back gate which had also been blown open by the blast.

              He didn't have even one tiny scratch on his paws when he walked into our house
              My grandmother, on the beach, South Bay, Scarborough, undated photo (poss. 1929 or 1930)

              Researching Cadd, Schofield, Cottrell in Lancashire, Buckinghamshire; Taylor, Park in Westmorland; Hayhurst in Yorkshire, Westmorland, Lancashire; Hughes, Roberts in Wales.

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              • #8
                My mother was bombed out twice in rotherhithe. Dad said to me they had saved up to buy furniture for the rooms they rented after marrying 1940 and he only saw the furniture once as the flat was bombed a few months later when he was abroad in RAF. Mum was at work. She had to move again in with her mum and that house was then bombed too in Neptune street, rotherhithe

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                • #9
                  am I one of the very few people who can actually remember bombs falling???
                  My grandmother, on the beach, South Bay, Scarborough, undated photo (poss. 1929 or 1930)

                  Researching Cadd, Schofield, Cottrell in Lancashire, Buckinghamshire; Taylor, Park in Westmorland; Hayhurst in Yorkshire, Westmorland, Lancashire; Hughes, Roberts in Wales.

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                  • #10
                    Looks like it sylv Or at least the only one willing to admit to it

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                    • #11
                      My grandmother, on the beach, South Bay, Scarborough, undated photo (poss. 1929 or 1930)

                      Researching Cadd, Schofield, Cottrell in Lancashire, Buckinghamshire; Taylor, Park in Westmorland; Hayhurst in Yorkshire, Westmorland, Lancashire; Hughes, Roberts in Wales.

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                      • #12
                        Sorry, miss - I know there were doodlebugs and V2s around the time I was born, as my grandparents' house suffered some blast damage. But I was "evacuated" to sundry rellies' houses in the Home Counties soon after I was born and then spent the next 2 years in deepest Northumberland, surrounded mostly by sheep.
                        Uncle John - Passed away March 2020

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                        • #13
                          Hm not the only one Sylvia!

                          I still have very vivid memories of the Plymouth Blitz, which left that city in complete destruction. My school was bombed, along with all the schools clustered around the city. Houses behind me, in front and to the side were damaged beyond repair, two houses I had lived in just a few months earler were blitzed and two young children killed in one of the houses in which we had lived. The whole of Plymouth was one big firestorm from end to end and it is the fire, the smoke, the dust and the gas fractures that live with me to this day. Many thousands of people fled the city every night and took refuge on Dartmoor to return exhausted in the morning. The flames could be seen from Exeter and beyond in Devon and from Bodmin in Cornwall. And we were considered a neutral zone!!! There is a bomb map of Plymouth available and it makes incredible reading!

                          Janet
                          Last edited by Janet; 11-04-15, 16:15.

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                          • #14
                            Janet ...........

                            how awful!


                            Several bombs fell in Oldham ........... one was found only a few years ago buried in a school field. But they were individual bombs dropped by planes on their way to or from attacks on Manchester or Liverpool.

                            The air raid warning sirens did go regularly, and I can remember several nights sitting on the cellar stairs!

                            The one near us was by far the worst though.
                            My grandmother, on the beach, South Bay, Scarborough, undated photo (poss. 1929 or 1930)

                            Researching Cadd, Schofield, Cottrell in Lancashire, Buckinghamshire; Taylor, Park in Westmorland; Hayhurst in Yorkshire, Westmorland, Lancashire; Hughes, Roberts in Wales.

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                            • #15
                              I was born during the early part of the war and all the explosions, journeys to safer places etc and nights in the air raid shelter were perfectly normal life to me - the biggest change was when the war was over and men stopped wearing uniform - looked odd to me - it seemed as if my world had changed.
                              I wanted to go back to the air raid shelter and wait for doodlebugs motors to stop .............. and this point you were supposed to count (occupational therapy I think) and this is the way I first learned to count - not sure you could get past 5 before there was a bang. I also quite liked the mickey mouse gas mask! I thought something had gone wrong with the world when the war was over - life changed but for me - life as I had known it was over (of course I had no idea early on what the "bangs" were) and there were a lot of men around and they were not wearing normal clothes! Also the exciting train journeys to odd places like Wales and Derbyshire (to get away from the bombing I later knew) stopped.

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