Amendment's to the Leicester bombing record.

    Humberstone Station sidings, rear of Kitchener Road: I have no recollection of a bomb there (as suggested in Carswell, Johnson, Kirrane 1989; Cartwright 1998) and since I was at St. Barnabas’ virtually every day I am sure to have been aware of it.

    East Park Road: immediately uphill from the corner with Park Vale Road. This crater disrupted the tram service and I had to make a detour (on cycle) to avoid it on my way to school (up Gwendolen Road, right through the allotments alongside the brook, and right again down Bradbourne Road).

    Spinney Hill Park: crater (or more than one?) in the men’s cricket pitch (i.e. opposite Blanklyn Avenue).

    Victoria Park Road: the large house standing between St. Mary’s Road and Knighton Park Road was almost totally demolished and the space still exists.

    Kitchener Road: our friend’s house at No.183 had a bomb in the back garden and the house had to be rebuilt.

    25 Elms Road: my wife’s family were trapped in the shelter when their house collapsed. I understand that the bomb was at the front of the house. Much building has taken place since, providing a nursing home and Sackville Gardens (which was part of the family garden).

    All of the above were 19th November 1940.

    Two of my contemporaries at the Wyggeston School (the Lloyd brothers - both small boys) lost their lives that night , in either Highfield Street or Severn Street. A man whom I knew was an A.R.P. Warden operating in that same area; he recounted that he stood with a Police Constable on the corner of St.Peter's Road and Highfield Street and they agreed to walk in opposite directions "round the square"; he never saw the P.C. again.


By Dr. A. Burrows
Stoughton



Sources:

Carswell, J.; Johnson, R. & Kirrane, S. (eds) 1989 “Ours To Defend... Leicestershire's people remember the home front.” The Leicester Oral History Archive & The Mantle Oral History Project.

Cartwright, T.C. 1998 “Birds Eye Wartime Leicester” TCC Publications, Leicester.