大象传媒

Soon after the war started my father, possibly following Government advice, decided to create an air raid shelter in our house, a four bedroom, semi-detached dwelling in a road leading down from the Great North Road, the A1. I was nine years old at the time. The chosen room was the downstairs front room, used pre-war as a dining room, which was next to the party wall. Four massive wooden columns were erected floor to ceiling (the dimensions must have been at least 12 inches square, but may have been more)which were situated so that the space between them and one wall allowed mattress supports from standard bedsteads to be fixed as two bunks complete with mattresses. Where my father acquired these I have no idea but our normal beds remained in place upstairs. A tarpaulin was positioned with supporting trusses so that any plaster from the ceiling would, in theory, be prevented from falling in to the room. Other beds were positioned inside the space created by the columns. Later the Morrison table shelter became available and one was erected by my father and me in the central space. The windows of this room were boarded up outside except for one shutter which was designed to allow fresh air to enter the room and could be taken up and down. It became my responsibility to do this on a daily basis, night and morning. Apart from the large timbers and tarpaulin, for which I think he engaged professional help, my father designed and fitted out the shelter himself with me acting as tool carrier and other supporting roles. Possibly my liking for DIY projects in my own home stem from those early days!

When air raids began in 1940 we used to come down from our bedrooms as soon as the siren sounded but soon, to avoid the disruption, we took to going to bed in the shelter room. We could hear the anti-aircraft guns firing from a nearby emplacement, as well as the bombers droning overhead, and when the raid seemed to be getting close we would all move into the Morrison shelter. The family consisted of my parents and three children although sometimes the eldest child was away studying. The nearest any bombs came was about 150 yards down the road where a house was hit and partially demolished. Fortunately there was no loss of life. We also had an unexploded bomb in a front garden nearby which caused a small crater and this was soon dealt with by the bomb disposal teams.

Thankfully our shelter was never put to the test but I think it would have survived a direct hit except, perhaps, by a land mine. At any rate even if the house had collapsed I think we would have survived in the Morrison shelter and could have been rescued. I know we were very fortunate to live on the northern outskirts of London where damage was relatively slight. Soon after the war ended it was all dismantled and the room, redecorated, returned to its former use.

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