War damage

[spoony]

Hi all, I came across a fascinating fact about one of the flats I used to live in yesterday. I was wondering if anyone knew of any similar places, or stories they might be able to share.

I used to live in this street in Shields Shields, in which I lived there for two years in an end terrace house. You could just tell that the next house was missing and that the street had been split into a South and a North. I found out yesterday that this was because of the Germans redesigning the street during the war. Never once did I make the connection that the house next door had been bombed out.

Personally I find it fascinating that such a modest house could have such a history. Any other stories of unexpected history out there>

 

[43021HST]

According to a rumour my house is built on top of a victorian gallows

 

[gordonthemoron]

presumably the gap in the west side of the Kings Cross train shed (offices) was due to bomb damage? It may have now been filled in due to the KX redevelopment

 

[metrocammel]

It's gone now, but up until around 10 years ago, there was a shop on the main street in Ashton-under-Lyne that had a pane of glass that was reputedly cracked when there was a huge explosion at amunitions factory in 1917!

 

[142094]

I used to live in this street in Shields Shields

I've been told a few times that the bridge over the Metro sidings in South Shields was built looking like the Tyne Bridge so German bombers would hit that area instead of Newcastle!

The only claim to fame I have is that our house is built on top of Hadrian's Wall, but haven't found any gold coins or stuff like that in the garden yet...

 

[Old Timer]

I remember being brought up around war damaged sites, which of course is where the phrase (something/somewhere) "looks like a bombsite" comes from.

Even in the late 60s there were still remnants of bombed out houses, and gaps in streets etc. where houses and other buildings used to stand.

Anderson and concrete shelters were still about in back gardens and left one with plenty to explore, as of course did pill boxes.

I am sure there are many still about but I recall there is one on the cliffs overlooking St Ives Bay in Cornwall.

From time to time one can come across old WW2 German bombs and indeed many areas of London still are registered as high risk sites for excavation because of the likelihood of finding an old unexploded bomb (UXB).

This was because unless a UXB was affecting the railway or some crucial utilities service of building, they were left alone on the basis that there were simply too many to trace and in any case those that were underground and had failed to go off were to a degree inert.

 

[SouthEastern-465]

This does not really count as somthing really amazing, but my house dates back to the early 1920s, and has only been through the 2nd world war, but it has several bullet holes in it! (Or there suppose to be!).

 

[Oracle]

There was a German bomb found just off London Road, Southampton recently. I think that the new houses plus the 'house' that is actually a ventilation shaft for the Picc Line next to the Bath Road/Great West Road junction at Henlys Roundabout was a former bombsite that was cleared. It was just wasteground when we used to play on it in the early 1960s.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

At Epsom station, on platform 4, the southernmost two of the platform canopy supports still have wartime shrapnel damage visible as a small number of holes - some of the splay is still noticable so you can see the exact direction in which the fragments were moving.

 

[37372]

My street backs onto a main road with rows of terraced houses on either side. On one side the houses have very small front yards and along the top of the wall running along them are small, evenly spaced metal lumps. Turns out these are the remains of railings that were cut off during the war to be melted down for aircraft etc.

 

[142094]

That's quite common, you see them all over the place, although they are gradually being lost when walls are replaced/buildings demolished. Sometimes you see a whole street where the railings were removed, but then one or two houses still have the originals.

 

[spoony]

That's quite common, you see them all over the place, although they are gradually being lost when walls are replaced/buildings demolished. Sometimes you see a whole street where the railings were removed, but then one or two houses still have the originals.

My new house has an old wall outside where you see where the old railings used to be, in fact most of the street has as well. I live couple of Streets from where Roker Park used to stand and I have a photo of the pitch being bombed. It always amazes me to think that just above where we live there were planed lobbing bombs on us.

 

[chuffchuff]

Between Ashford and Tonbridge if you look out of the window
the round ponds you see are bomb craters from WW11

 

[Vulcan]

Our (well, Abbey Light Railway's) WHR slate wagon has bullet holes through the frames from its days as a moving target for soldier training.

 

[142094]

It always amazes me to think that just above where we live there were planed lobbing bombs on us.

Same here, I keep thinking that there most probably at one time a few thousand years ago there was a Roman legion walking through my back garden!