- Contributed byÌý
- brssouthglosproject
- People in story:Ìý
- Anthony Hutt, Mrs E. M. Hutt (deceased), Stanley Walter Hutt, Mr G Hutt (deceased) Mrs C Holmes
- Location of story:Ìý
- Bristol, Cheddar and Pensford
- Background to story:Ìý
- Civilian
- Article ID:Ìý
- A5213062
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 19 August 2005
One night during the blitz on Bristol, (I cannot remember the date but Bristol Historians would probably be able to verify) we were in our house, No. 18 West-Town Lane in Brislington, and the raid was getting very close. We decided to evacuate ourselves and drive up to my sister’s house in Kinsale Road where we hoped it would be safer. My father’s car, a 1936 Vauxhall 14, Reg. CPJ341 was in the garage laid up for the war.
We had kept the battery charged and there was some petrol in the tank. Reg got the car started and put it out in the road for us to pile into, there was a particularly close bomb and he dived down by the side of the car, when we opened the doors again I saw that a large piece of shrapnel had pierced the leather sliding roof and gone between the front and back seats and straight through on to the road. We all piled into the car and headed along West Town Lane under the old Railway Bridge (now demolished) and up Hazelbury Road, into Kinsale Road to safety at my sisters house.
In the morning after the raid, we drove back to West Town Lane to find a bomb crater by the Railway Bridge. We do not know how close we had been to being obliterated by the said bomb but we were thankful to have missed it.
The sequel to this story is that my father, (Stanley Walter Hutt) fearing for our safety, and having a job as Senior Charge Engineer at the old SWEB Power Station on Feeder Road, felt obliged to evacuate us to Froglands Farm Caravan Site in Cheddar, where we spent a blissful three months.
Travelling to Cheddar and back every day proved too difficult, so we moved our holiday caravan there and finished up at Belluton Farm, Pensford, courtesy of Farmer George Wookey and his son, where we stayed for the rest of the war. Our unit was a 16’ x 9’ garage divided into two rooms, our Holiday caravan, a large side awning and a shed, wherein we were safe and happy and my father could relax being able to commute with a SWEB car, which was either a Series E Morris 8 or a Series III Morris 12 (which ever was available).
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