Sydenham in WWII (areas bombed during the war)
Published by the London Topographical Society but according to their website it is now out of print - see link below:
http://www.topsoc.org/books.htm
http://www.topsoc.org/books.htm
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Eadefamily
- Posts: 9
- Joined: 1 Jul 2010 23:12
- Location: Sussex
Evacuation
Where people in Sydenham evacuated as my family lived close by?Falkor wrote:167 & 169 Venner Road (8-Nov-1940).
Re: Sydenham in WWII (areas bombed during the war)
I have always been told that lower Adamsrill got hit by a Doodlebug, hence the prefabs afterwards
Re: Sydenham in WWII (areas bombed during the war)
My father was living at 63 Longton Avenue at the start of the war (he was 17) and that house was bombed on 11 Sept 1940 (the upstairs of the house was destroyed but it was later rebuilt). My father was in the cellar at the time. His parents later rented no. 85 until 1942/3 when they bought no. 59 (my grandmother didn't leave there until 1966).
This may be of interest, an extract from my Dad's diary:
Nov 29th 1940 Friday (Longton Avenue)
I did not write my diary for today since at half past six - the time I usually do it - the evening raid had started and I did not bother to come upstairs to do it. The raid was the heaviest that we (in Sydenham, at least) have yet experienced. For six whole hours the planes came over without ceasing and the guns near or far were at work all the time. The shelter is not yet dry enough to go into, so we stayed indoors. A stick of bombs came, then shortly afterwards flares were dropped on the park and others in the neighbourhood and these were extinguished with machine guns and ordinary rifles by the Balloon Barrage men. I did not trouble to take my clothes off when I lay down in the cellar and as I was dropping off another bomb came shrieking down. Finally the raid died down and the "All Clear" went about two o'clock. Such intensification could not be kept up for ever.
Nov 30th Saturday
This morning setting out for work while it was still dark, I came across a barried in the Avenue just by Ormanton Road and a board up "Unexploded bomb". I fancied the bomb was beyond the barrier and so I went up the other way to Wells Road and found a barrier up there. Then I knew that the bomb that I heard at midnight had fallen in the Avenue. It fell just within the park railings, almost opposite our old house [no. 63] and it seems very probable that the objective they were aiming at was the Power Station on the railway behind our old home.
Everybody agrees today that last night's raid was one of the worse - if the same scale had been employed on a small city there would be very little left of it.
This may be of interest, an extract from my Dad's diary:
Nov 29th 1940 Friday (Longton Avenue)
I did not write my diary for today since at half past six - the time I usually do it - the evening raid had started and I did not bother to come upstairs to do it. The raid was the heaviest that we (in Sydenham, at least) have yet experienced. For six whole hours the planes came over without ceasing and the guns near or far were at work all the time. The shelter is not yet dry enough to go into, so we stayed indoors. A stick of bombs came, then shortly afterwards flares were dropped on the park and others in the neighbourhood and these were extinguished with machine guns and ordinary rifles by the Balloon Barrage men. I did not trouble to take my clothes off when I lay down in the cellar and as I was dropping off another bomb came shrieking down. Finally the raid died down and the "All Clear" went about two o'clock. Such intensification could not be kept up for ever.
Nov 30th Saturday
This morning setting out for work while it was still dark, I came across a barried in the Avenue just by Ormanton Road and a board up "Unexploded bomb". I fancied the bomb was beyond the barrier and so I went up the other way to Wells Road and found a barrier up there. Then I knew that the bomb that I heard at midnight had fallen in the Avenue. It fell just within the park railings, almost opposite our old house [no. 63] and it seems very probable that the objective they were aiming at was the Power Station on the railway behind our old home.
Everybody agrees today that last night's raid was one of the worse - if the same scale had been employed on a small city there would be very little left of it.