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We lived in a semi-detached three bedroom house built in 1932 in an avenue in Stretford, which is a town nine miles from Manchester near Trafford Park. There the engineering factories had been turned over to making ammunition and parts for planes and bombs. Most nights we had German planes coming over trying to bomb these factories.

The shout came for most of residents to have an air-raid shelter instead of going under the stairs or beds. We joined with next door, opening up the hedges between our gardens and building an Anderson Shelter with pieces of corrugated steel bolted together to form an ‘igloo’. Half of the shelter was below the ground and half above and there were earth, grass and sandbags covering it and placed around the entrance. Four bunk beds were installed, a small nightlight, two stools, a small ladder and a rug for the earth floor.

I remember nights in the shelter when the siren blew because ‘the planes and bombs are coming’ and I rushed down the garden in a maroon ‘teddy bear suit’ and hood. Well, you had to keep warm! We took blankets and pillows down the steps and onto a bunk bed. We had to share with an adult and there was no room for my legs and feet. It wasn’t exactly comfortable!

The adults took turns to do A.R.P. duty in the various avenues and also took turns in making cups of tea in the houses and rushing over the garden with them to the shelter. Sleep-never! So little room and oh, the horrid creepy-crawlies that seemed to enjoy our company!

Well, after months of doing this exercise a bomb did fall-right through our garage where stood, greased for after the war, our Morris car straight through its roof the incendiary bomb went. Oh dear! What a great deal was said when my dad returned at the end of the war, de-mobbed from the R.A.F., to find his pride and joy sold! Mum had sold it for ten pounds and had it towed away.

We had our grandparents in the shelter with us. They walked for miles from their home when the sirens went. After many months granddad decided to build a reinforced brick shelter leading out into the garden from his dining room. Three quarters of this was underground and one quarter above. This was a huge success and granddad decided that with dad being away it would be better if mum and I had a shelter like his built onto our dining room so that his dear grand-daughter didn’t have to go out in the cold! We were very posh having this type of shelter but still the creepy-crawlies came out when we were down under.

At the end of the war these shelters had to be taken down but because they were built so strongly special equipment had to be hired so the demolition cost more than the construction. During the war it did make another room though windowless.

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