Eye in the sky Zeppelin visit before raid
OVER the years I now realise that the German planning to bomb Filton aeroplane works (BT feature, September 22) was started in 1936 with the “courtesy” visits of the Zeppelins, which I viewed from Horfield Church Sunday School as a 12 year old in the afternoon.
Having started work at Filton as a clerk in the wing assembly section I remember the pre-raid reconnaissance just before noon on Saturday, September 21, (possibly by Major Kless) – he flew directly over the works.
On September 25 many Southmead estate houses were hit and, being off line the main works missed any major damage. Being in a shelter one side of the roadway down to the flight sheds, being off line with bombs that hit the Tool Room shelter the other side of the roadway, which took a direct hit, killing many and injuring others.
I should have left the BAC just after March 1940 as I had agreed an apprenticeship with Colston Elec, but as I was offered a Tool Room apprenticeship, I was refused permission to leave. In hindsight, if I had accepted the offer I would have been in the “Tool Room” shelter.
As it was, the works management must have realised that due to loss of lives senior staff, not apprentices, were now required so I was released to join “Colston Elec” which I did on Monday, November 25 – after the first major Blitz on Bristol on the Sunday night.
Camouflage played a big part in success or failure of the raid. When I joined BAC the works was being camouflaged and I soon realised that with large areas of cream between brown, green etc from an aircraft the works could be seen as part of the Southmead housing estate – a possible reason why they started bombing early and off line?
We welcomed the arrival of a squadron of Hurricane fighters back to Filton base to counter the Friday 27 planned raid on Parnalls, Yate which showed the misguided boycott of the air raid shelters.
On Monday, September 30 we were summoned to the works canteen at midday to Ernest Bevin put the works under martial law, saying that anyone attempting to leave the works during an air raid could be shot on sight.
There was also a major re-distribution of the air raid shelters to prevent another Tool Room disaster. Frank Newbery
Pensford
Benchmark bagger
WITH reference to the September 8 edition of BT regarding the ‘A’ marks on brickwork. I too have noticed them but sadly I cannot shed any further light on that. However, I was alerted to a reader’s piece about benchmarks.
Here I must confess my guilty geeky pleasure in being a benchmark bagger. Whenever I go out to explore a new area, I create a map with them on as an incentive.
The Ordnance Survey first started to make these marks in what is known as the First Geodetic Levelling (GL) from 1840 – an ambitious plan to map the entire country to a standard of detail thought impossible by many, but succeed they did.
Two other big surveys of England were carried out (Second GL in 1912-21 and the Third GL 1950-68). In between there were any number of smaller scale operations which continued using benchmarks right up until the early 1980s.
Naturally, the modern digital satellite-linking world has replaced all the old manual slog that these intrepid and disciplined men carried out to such a remarkable accuracy.
As I go about spotting them, I am always reminded of just how difficult that would have been with simple pencils, paper, staffs and the Ramsden theodolite, up hill and down dale.
It’s worth noting how good the maps of the mid-1800s are compared with today’s!
I hope that you have found some of this of interest. I still quietly smirk at the fuss over the Aardman statue trails of a few years back: they generated a lot of desire to get around the city to spot them, yet I have thousands of benchmarks just waiting for me to go out and bag them!
Neil Owen
by email Editor’s note: Mr Owen is a very active contributor to the www. geograph.org.uk website, which aims to provide a photo from every single square of the Ordnance Survey maps of the British Isles.
We urge readers to take a good look at it, whether the photos of Bristol or any other places, it’s a wonderful compendium of pictures ranging from the eccentric and quirky to the very mundane.
Ringing the changes
YOUR feature on buildings added to the Local List (BT, September 22) included the former Seaman’s Mission in Royal Oak Avenue, off Prince Street.
You were right when you said it has been derelict for a long time. The west end facing Prince Street was damaged by a bomb in the war, and in the 1950-60s a two-storey office building replaced it. However, the rest of the Mission is still standing.
Back in the late 1980s, when I worked in Queen Square, I used to look at the two disused bells in the bell turret of the Mission, wondering if it would be possible to get hold of them. At the time we were collecting bells from everywhere we could, in order to create a ring of bells for Frenchay church.
One day as I passed the Mission I spotted amongst all the posters and graffiti that adorned the wooden
shuttering, a neatly typed notice. It was an application for a drinks licence for the premises by a man named Butler, who gave an address in rural Yorkshire.
I assumed he must own the building, and if so, could give us permission to remove the bells. A letter asking if we could have the bells was sent to Mr Butler at the address on the notice, and it produced a reply from Samuel Smiths Left, the bells at the former Seaman’s Mission in Royal Oak Avenue, Bristol. Right, Removal of the bells at the former Seaman’s Mission in Royal Oak Avenue, Bristol
Brewery, of Tadcaster – Mr Butler was their company secretary!
Yes, they did own the building, and they gave us the OK to take the bells. The present state of the building tells us their licence application must have been unsuccessful...
Shortly afterwards, David Meek Plant Hire of Yate kindly provided a cherry picker and operator, and the bells were liberated.
They were cast by John Warner of
London, and both were dated 1878 – presumably the year the Mission was built.
Unfortunately, neither bell was usable as it was, so they were melted down by John Taylor’s of Loughborough in 1991, and the metal used to cast the two lightest bells of the six that now grace Frenchay church.
The new ring of bells in Frenchay church was dedicated in August 1991, so in a way the Seaman’s Mission bells still ring out!
Alan Freke
Wrong shelter
THE Editor is wrong in his reply to the letter from H M Brace (BT letters, September 22) when he says Morrison shelters were made of curved corrugated metal.
As has been said in previous letters you published, it was Anderson shelters that were made of curved corrugated metal and Morrison shelters were smaller, tablelike structures for use indoors by those who didn’t have room outside in their gardens for an Anderson shelter.
Most people will be familiar with the coal sheds in prefab gardens, these were Anderson-type shelters, but not buried in the ground like they were when used as shelters.
So the structure in H M Brace’s garden may have been an air raid shelter, but is neither an Anderson shelter or a Morrison shelter.
It is all on the internet for people to look up and check if they are so minded.
I don’t need to, this was part of my childhood having been brought up during the war and lived in prefabs for many years since.
P Collins by email Editor’s reply: Yes indeed, I was having what we might charitably describe as a premature senior moment. As a WWII obsessive I did know this, but just got my Morrisons and Andersons mixed up in my addled brain. This will not, of course, excuse me from having to now spend a lengthy period of selfisolation on the Bristol Times Naughty Step.
Many apologies to readers for this error.
Andersons and Morrisons
MOST interested in H M Brace’s ‘80 years old Air Raid Shelter’ (BT Letters, September 22) as the photos show the presence of a large window on one wall, and were the construction there for the inmate’s safety, certainly it wouldn’t be glazed as any serious explosion that took place nearby would certainly have caused lethal shards of glass to be blasted onto the residents inside – unless of course it was an alteration made post War to shed some light on the bits and bobs that were to be later stored inside!
A friend of mine’s somewhat affluent Grannie had a model home built based on a winner at the 1938 Ideal Home Exhibition – just in time to have an air raid shelter constructed in her spacious back garden.
This had brick-built uprights which supported some thick prestressed concrete slabs which made a flat roof. A small opening led to a flight of stairs down into an underground cavern which could seat a family of six in cramped conditions, but it was neither of the makes mentioned.
You did say the brick and concrete one would collapse in the event of an explosion nearby – but that was only if they were just at ground level (akin to similar long ones built in school grounds, but with curved roofs and suitably turfed over).
Not unlike today, with the Covid clouds brewing over Europe again, similar advance preparations were made to help combat bombing raids which were expected to begin on the day war was declared. Gas masks (a far cry from our Covid ones!) were provided for everybody, and it became law to carry one, although they were never needed. The then Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, had every home that had a garden supplied with a shelter – a corrugated iron ‘tunnel’ which when let into the ground provided a bit of cramped space. They cost £7 to the rich, but to most it was free.
That was the ‘Anderson’ version, but the alternative was the need to have something for families in the big cities who didn’t have any garden space at all (ie the old Victorian back-to-backs).
It was the later Home Secretary Herbert Morrison who had his name put to a device that was thought to be better than just heading under the dining table whenever a raid threatened overhead. A Morrison shelter took the form of a sturdy wire cage which opened out similarly to a fireguard to form a rectangular box. Believe it or not, somehow this was shoved under the table and you just crept inside! That too cost seven quid – more than the working man’s average weekly wage back then, but again only the rich paid. And those are the differences between a true Anderson and a real Morrison as I recall them!
Many even stranger things went on in the War. It was all down to money as we were still broke after the last little episode that only gave ‘Jerry’ time to re-group. And to think they even toyed with the idea of having cardboard coffins – and that’s probably where all our well fingered old newspapers went to as we were asked to collect salvage!