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The Blitz

  • Thread starter Thread starter O.C.
  • Start date Start date
Lencops, do you remember a poster for showing a pig pulling a cart full of pork sauasages with the caption, 'Drawing its own conclusion'. It was all over Aston, I remember as a kid, and still think it was one of the cleverer one's?
lencops said:
Bovril recruiting poster, Joe Lyons price list.
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Can someone tell me if the reservoir is still at Aston. It was on the left hand side going towards Salford Bridge coming from Aston Railway Bridge directon along the Litchfield Road. I once saw a fisherman in the 30's pull a pike from it and it grabbed his hand. We kids thought it was hilarious and went a week later to see him catch another but he wasn't there. Regards , David Weaver.
 
https://
marshbaxters.jpg
 
The Piggy poster was also (very Large) on the front of Marsh & Baxters premises at Digbeth. Although not a poster, but a Sign Writers very skillfull handy work.

It was there for many years, I always looked at it, from the bus on my way home from work.
 
Does Central Library hold an original copy of the red and black map of birmingham with bombs dropped during the blitz? I've seen the digital image. I'm particularly interested in Fazeley street (where it meets Bartholomew street) and any war time stories, maps or pictures anyone has of that area of digbeth? I know there used to be a terraced housing along the street before the war.
 
Photos, Bomb damaged Anderson shelters in Oldnow Rd, Small Heath, ARP members clearing up in John Bright Street.
 
Help please.

Does anyone have a photograph of the bomb damaged St Thomas's Church, Holloway Head/Granville Street. If possible soon after the bombing, and if possible, also the date. It is now known as "The Peace Garden".

I was born in Cregoe Street,(right opposite) just about where the Health centre is now.

My mum used to have pictures,i've seen them in the past. I've tried to find them but they do not appear to be amongst her things. Probably lost in the usual clearance after she passed on.

Many thanks in advance.
 
William Mosedale's story in the Birmingham Blitz has been told in full for the first time in Come if ye Dare, the story of the 11 Civil Defence George Cross receipients.

It is available direct from the author for £12.50. Please PM me with an email address and a flyer will folllow.

Terry
 
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Len,

Can you work out the orientation of that? Where would it have been taken from? Is that New Street top-left?

Chris
 
ChrisM, Trying to remember i think the Big Top marque was on the corner of High St/ New St if i have got it right i would standing at the top of the Bull Ring hill, on the pic New St would be on the left, making more enquiries. Len.
 
ChrisM, Put "Architecture & Austerity Birmingham 1949-1950" into Google i think you will like it, The Big Top pic is in it. Len.
 
Thanks for the pointer, Len. The booklet is reproduced in this direct link - https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/ELibrary?E_LIBRARY_ID=61&a=1080741348832

It would be good to see the original photograph. Perhaps it's in the Central Library.

I only remember the Big Top tent itself. Not the apparent funfair which seems to have been there as well. And I do recall it as being fairly close to New Street so perhaps that street is indeed the one in the top LH corner of the picture. I went to the circus there, in perhaps April 1942, as a treat for my birthday. We were having a windy period of weather at the time and I can remember the slapping of the canvass and the creaking of the structure. But it was my mother who was doing all the worrying: I was too busy enjoying the clowns. A day or so later we read in the Mail that it had in fact blown down.

Chris.
 
ChrisM, 11yrs young middle 1939, 1941 Big Top site they had a mock up of a coal mine and you went along tunnels lined with imitation coal and pit prop supports it then widened out and on display were jars containing miners lungs who had died through breathing in coal dust, they looked like lumps of coal, another mock up i saw was of the jungle with man traps with sharpened bamboo sticking up in a pit covered with a camouflaged flimsy cover also various items of Japanese weapons & equipment (my Brother was in the 14th Army in Burma), i can`t remember visiting the circus but money was tight, when i started work 1943 age 14yrs i was paid 11s.6d per week of 48 hrs, 5 & 1/2 days. Len.
 
I have a friend wos father was killed on the nigth of 19th November 1940
Im sure she will not mind me showing this commemoration.
[FONT=&quot]In Memory of
Civilian ERNEST EDWARD LORD
Civilian War Dead
who died age 38
on 19 November 1940
Son of George Lord, of 141 Trinity Road, West Bromwich, Staffordshire; husband of Hagar Lord, of 76 Hassop Road, Beeches Estate, Great Barr. Died at B.S.A. Factory, Small Heath.
Remembered with honour

[/FONT]
 
Wendy said:
Cromwell, what an amazing story such bravery, we have really no idea. I can remember talking to an elderly lady who lost he brother in the bombings. He was only 21 and was sent home from the army because of a heart defect, he then worked as an ARP warden. He was buried in an ally in Reginald Road Saltly where he took shelter during the bombing.
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I don't know if it was the same bombing raid, but my greatgrandparents lived in Reginald Road. Their house took a direct hit from a mine which lodged in the roof without exploding immediately. They were evacuated along with their neighbours and lost everything when the bomb eventually exploded a couple of days later.

The sad thing is that when it happened their dog got left in the house for some reason and they weren't allowed to go and get it. The dog it seems was the only casulaty of this particular bomb, along with my greatgrandparents home and 2 or 3 others along with it.

Ali
 
I don't know if this happened during the Blitz but I will add it as part of Brums history anyway. We lived in Wilton street, Lozells from 1957. One of our neighbours who was living there during the war told us that a bomb buried itself under the entry at number 120. Luckily for them all it did not explode and was removed. This part of Wilton street was back to back terraces. In the yard at the back of the houses was a large brick built communal bomb shelter. This had a massive concrete roof and steel doors. It was locked up and we were never allowed in. Does anyone remember these and what they were like inside. It was not demolished until 1967 when all of the housing was cleared.-
 
alijp said:
I don't know if it was the same bombing raid, but my greatgrandparents lived in Reginald Road. Their house took a direct hit from a mine which lodged in the roof without exploding immediately. They were evacuated along with their neighbours and lost everything when the bomb eventually exploded a couple of days later.

The sad thing is that when it happened their dog got left in the house for some reason and they weren't allowed to go and get it. The dog it seems was the only casulaty of this particular bomb, along with my greatgrandparents home and 2 or 3 others along with it.

Ali
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I have a friend who lost her brother in the raid on Reginald Road. She told me he was sent home from the war as unfit so he became an air warden. His mother ran an off license in Reginald Road. When he didn't return home his sister (my friend) was sent by her mother to look for him. She was directed to the 'bath's' used as temporary morgues. She told me a man in a white coat took her into a room where two bodies were covered he asked her which one was her brother. She told me I nearly fainted at the shock and then the reality hit I had to tell my mother who was a widow. This was such a heart rending story to me as she was only 16 at the time. My friend now lives in Brighton but has been with her daughter to see her brothers name on the lovely memorial to the people who died in the Birmingham air raids outside St Martins, when I told her his name was there.
 
That's a terribly sad story Wendy. I was only born in 1964 so have no idea what it must have been like to live through such terrible times.

My father was actually born in the August of 1940 in Washwood Heath, right in the middle of a bombing raid, he was born in an air raid shelter, which I believe was something like the local swimming baths.

Do you remember whether they used a swimming pool in the area as an air raid shelter, or have my childhood memories gone haywire?
 
alijip sorry I don't know. I do know several swimming baths were used as Morgues. Maybe your dad was born there because they would have taken the injured there as well. My friend presumed the man in the white coat was a doctor. So perhaps it was the obvious place. If you send for his birth certificate it will tell you where he was born.
 
Hi Duggy.

We had one of those shelters in our yard in Hunters Road, Hockley. Inside there was a set of bunkbeds, a set either side of the shelter, three bunks high. The bunks always smelled of wet sandbags, but us kids didn't mind, the air raids were a great lark to us, we had no idea of the danger, anyway, what could happen to us, our mothers were with us, so we must be safe.
 
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