Plymouth Blitz Tours

It's been a long time since our last blog post, so we thought we better make it a good one!

It's been a long time in the planning and now Hidden Heritage have announced one of their latest exclusive tours in the historic maritime City of Plymouth. Launching in January 2015, Plymouth Blitz Tours will be an interactive experience, taking you on walks around the relics of Second World War sites in Plymouth, inspired by the people who were there who have shared their memories and helped us to build a better understanding of what time was like during the war.

In 2011, Hidden Plymouth assisted BBC Spotlight for the 70th Anniversary of the Plymouth Blitz, visiting Maker Camp on the Rame Peninsula, and descending into one of the former underground Public Air Raid Shelters, a true time capsule from the 1940's.

Now, it's time to finally take you, the people of Plymouth and visitors from around the globe with us on a journey into the past.

Proceeds from tours will be going back to The Plymouth Blitz Project, an online archive that was created with strong support from Hidden Plymouth and Steve Johnson at Cyberheritage, who have shared a great deal of Plymouth History to a worldwide audience online, and now exclusively, to those of you who wish to learn more, with history walks taking you on the journey of this great City that rose from the rubble, beginning with A Plan for Plymouth in 1943 to become Britain's Ocean City today.

Our aim has always been to have some form of Plymouth Blitz Experience, and this year we have moved one step closer to making that a reality, just in time for the 75th Anniversary we hope! #PlymBlitz75

North Prospect School Air Raid Shelters

During the regeneration of North Prospect in Summer of last year, another two WWII air raid shelters were discovered within days of each other during demolition work on the school. Last documented in 1989, when work on a new playground was halted after groundworkers broke through a roof section of the southern shelter, the smaller of the two, but this time round the larger north shelter had been uncovered too & archaeologists from Exeter were able to document both before their demolition. We managed to grab some exclusive photos from the southern shelter only & what follows is our account, with some fantastic graffiti from the period but very little artefacts left lying around.

Filled in stairwell of the original entrance

Infill through one of the escape hatches

Making the way through to the next section

Section of shelter with roof collapse & toilet cubicles

As you can see, this was one of the squarer type of construction with the precast sections & girders fitted additionally for extra strength at a later date. Some of the girders were found to have a combination British Steel & Earl of Dudley Steel markings on them indicating these were manufactured in the Midlands, although it is thought the concrete sections originate from quarries in Cornwall. One section of the shelter had suffered major roof collapse near to one of the toilet blocks.

Looking down a section of shelter with the passageway to the right leading to entrance

Torchlight shines from the distant passageway

A view showing the steel girders added for extra strength

Crumbling sandstone from the walls of the shelter

Earl of Dudley Steel girder section

The graffiti varied from child's drawings to adult humor & rude sketches, some of which would have shocked the schoolkids of the time & I wonder if the drawings came from older teenagers or adults. Maps of the 2 shelters were sketched onto one section, an almost cartoon sketch of Winston Churchill adorned another, name calling & random signatures could be found in other areas on the walls. For it's size, it contained a fair amount of graffiti & we documented what we could find in the time that we had.

Barrage balloon & banter

Jack

Postbox

Shelter map

Name calling scirbbled out

More examples of name calling

Sir Winston

Pat Brookes

Luftwaffe aircraft

Mary had a little lamb....the rude version 1940's style

No.2 Class Section

Candle with pin through found atop a girder just inside the entrance to the shelter

Although the pencil sketches were great in number, the artefacts were much fewer with by far the best being a candle made of pigs fat with a pin through for the holder. This was found on top of the girder immediately next to the entrance. This would have seen use during the raids no doubt. We were told a couple of years before they were uncovered that there was a shower block in one of the shelters but looking the archaeologist's plans, there was no evidence to support this. 

Shelter sections piled up awaiting disposal from the northern playground shelter

Another view of the shelter sections

Notice the heras fencing in the foreground covering the exposed sections of air raid shelter in the northern playground

A few days later, we were passing on a lunch break from work when we noticed a pile of shelter rubble & pulled over to grab a few photos on the camera phone, making them probably the last photos of the now demolished shelters. There we have it, another 2 have gone but how many remain is anyone's guess!

Were you a child who sheltered here during WWII? Do you have a member fo family who attended the school with memories of the Plymouth Blitz? If so please get in touch as we would appreciate any stories to add to the archives. Contact us via info@hiddenplymouth.co.uk

Walls of History

At many of the historic military sites & air raid shelters, we have been lucky enough to document pencil graffiti & etchings, some dating back more than 100 years. Written on whitewashed & eroded walls - names, company units, humour & drawings fill an otherwise vacant space leaving a clue for us to hopefully build a better picture & history of the location.

WWII graffiti beneath Bovisand Fort casemates

Graffiti dating back to November 1914,  four months after the start of World War I

Dedication to a Captain on the walls of a former prison cell

With many sites documented now lost to demolition, these images live on with an important purpose - a reminder of the occupants of the time. What happened to the people in later years? The Private who etched his name in pencil at an underground fuel store in 1914 for example - Was he to see battle in the fields of the Somme? Or the ladies of the NAAFI, names written in chalk adorning a section of school air raid shelter - What was to be their fate during the remainder of the Plymouth Blitz?

A prisoner in a fort prison cell left his mark in December 1914, where it still remains evident today

Initials inside a fort tunnel

WWII graffiti months before the German surrender

Air raid shelters around the city have thrown up some of the finest pencil scrawls from shelters around the UK, with sketches including Churchill, Hitler, Luftwaffe aircraft, names & addresses. Many quality drawings adorn humid walls, the artist unknown in many cases, but leaving their historic imprint for future generations to discover & document, making otherwise unseen places accessible to the public via photographs. Amount of graffiti in shelters does vary with one containing very little left, or drawings that had simply worn away through time. Or, in the case of a shelter we documented last year that had the most drawings I have personally seen, stunningly preserved & after 4 hours of documenting what we found, the chances are there will still be more that we had missed, waiting to be discovered by the next researcher.

HMS Javelin

Support Plymouth Warships Week

Luftwaffe dropping parachute bombs

Crossed out scrawls

Mary had a little lamb....

Victory to the British Empire - We did win!

I often wonder what the person was experiencing at the time of their scrawls in the shelter. Were they filled with fear of the chaotic bombardment that rained on the city? Or calm in their thoughts with the mind being occupied with their drawing? There are, in my opinion, works of art on some of the walls showing true skill of the person sketching & must have taken a great amount of effort & time. We look forward to bringing you more findings over the coming months. If you have any photos taken from other locations please feel free to get in touch!

Recognise this chap?

National Fire Service

Sinister looking gas mask sketch

Standing almost three feet high, this stunning depiction of a worker

Boot sketch

Look out for another feature on the blog coming soon.....Shelter Art of WWII.

The All Clear

Our first limited print is available from February entitled The All Clear. It depicts a modern view of how colours were used inside an air raid shelter. The green of the all clear overshadowing the red fading of an air raid in progress, & the bright light of a would-be ARP warden protruding through the blackout to calmly direct you outside......but to what?

Stories tell of emerging after a heavy raid close-by & being confronted with total devastation. Homes flattened from direct hits & on fire from incendiary devices that fell in their thousands. This underground warren of passageways hold many stories that have never come to light & through the Faces of Plymouth Blitz, we will bring you new unpublished accounts from the people who were there.

If you would like yours or a family members history to be part of a massive online archive, please get in touch via info@hiddenplymouth.co.uk

Faces of Plymouth Blitz

Over the past four years we have met with many locals who experienced the Plymouth Blitz, & this year we are looking to speak with more to gather stories & photos from the time. Our research will be collated as part of the Faces of Plymouth Blitz project we have running throughout the year & we urge you to get in touch with us if you would like to share your memories for future generations to learn more about their past.

One of our readers, Lucy, recently got in touch with some fantastic memories from her mum, Mary, whom we have since spoken with to gather detailed information of her experiences in WWII & shed more light on the deep air raid shelter at Hexton Tunnel.

Here is a short excerpt of the full account that Lucy kindly mailed us;

Mary Outhwaite (nee Hine) was born in January 1938, and lived on Hooe Road, the main road into Hooe, until she was an adult.  She remembers the Hexton Hill tunnel and the Breakwater fort.

When the air raid alarm started, my mother would pick me up take me to the bottom of the garden, over the fence, through the fields and down the steep path that leads to the tunnel.  At times the tunnel would be full of people, sometimes squeezed in like sardines – my mother said that one night it was so airless in there, a match wouldn’t stay lit - some of the people would have made makeshift beds.  Mother and I would often sit on some type of wooden bench until the all clear sounded, and we would go home.  There was no door at the entrance of the tunnel, and some people would stand and watch the planes and bombing.  My father wasn’t with us as he was in the home guard and stationed at the top of Murder Hill (Hooe Hill), where there is still a sentry box near the top on the left, where the ground starts to level out.  He was stationed on the guns there, I suppose firing at incoming enemy aircraft. 

My father used to rent a piece of land which overlooked the tunnel, and I used to play there.  When I was about nine or ten (after the war), I would visit the tunnel with friends and walk right through, although there was a slight kink in it and you couldn’t see daylight from one end to the other.  One day we could see a suitcase in the entrance to the tunnel, we didn’t approach, but went home briefly, probably ten minutes at the most.  When we came back, our picnic had been ransacked – oddly, the cheese pasties had gone but the rock buns remained; the suitcase had gone.  The tunnel is on the edge of Hooe Lake, local people were convinced that Lord Haw Haw, the famous propagandist, lived close by on a house boat, and was seen sitting in the bar of the Royal Oak which is also on the edge of the lake.  This may have been after the war although he was tried at Nuremburg and subsequently hanged. 

My grandmother, Mary Hine, realised that this steep track to the tunnel was not an easy one to follow in the dark, so she painted marker stones white to aid vision by night. I last went into the tunnel about ten years ago, from the lake side, it seemed so much smaller!  It was about five foot wide, and a couple of feet drop on either side of the main path.  It was being used for storage, and it didn’t go back very far.

A collapse in the tunnel today denies access to the other entrance that Mary's family used

There we have it, just one amazing story that we intend to build on & all thanks to one of our readers getting in touch to share their family history. If you would like to feature your family as part of the series, please get in touch via info@hiddenplymouth.co.uk

Keep following for future updates & amazing memories from the children of Plymouth Blitz. Here is a video from Steve Johnson showing an ITV documentary from 2001.

"The Blockhouse" WWII Mural - Stoke Village

If you're local to Stoke Village or know Plymouth well, you surely must be aware of The Blockhouse, a prominent Napoleonic Redoubt overlooking the dockyard it was built to protect. Officially known as Mount Pleasant Redoubt it sits as one of the highest points in the City at over 70 metres, & now forms use as an impressive public park. On a clear day it offers amazing views across to Dartmoor, Bodmin Moor, & across to Plymouth Sound, if you haven't been make a note to appreciate this important & historic feature & enjoy the view for yourselves.

Stood atop The Blockhouse with fantastic views over Plymouth Sound

In WWII it was brought into much needed multi-use, becoming a strong defensive site against the Luftwaffe with barrage balloons & anti-aircraft guns. Alongside Masterman Road, ARP shelters were built into the glacis of the redoubt of which all remain today sealed for future generations to discover. At the corner entrance lies an ARP Warden's Post stripped of original fittings but now a visual attraction in the form of a memorial to the area's people during WWII. The paint is now starting to flake a little due to the harsh weather we have had but try go see it for yourself, we think it's great!

This is a fantastic memorial from a fresh generation perspective sitting next to the Stoke Youth & Community Centre, giving local residents a daily reminder of what The Blockhouse was like during World War II. A fitting tribute to those who were there. With the shelters still buried, it would be great to eventually see them opened up to the public as an extra feature to the park, oh & whilst you're at it, why not have an anti-aircraft gun mounted inside the Redoubt for good measure.

We will feature another blog post on Mount Pleasant Redoubt soon with more photos from the park & looking at the history of the site. Be sure to check it out if you're passing by!