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

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

"The Wall" Public Air Raid Shelter Part 2

Well you got the brief tour of the "The Wall" ARP Shelter & here we look at some of the graffiti & artefacts found within alongside a few surprises above ground. To kick off though, we want to focus on that one brick in "The Wall".

P.L.D. 10 Years 13/1/1941 

The person who etched this into the brick toilet cubicle would now be 81 years old & we are guessing it is a male. We urge all readers to check their families for the initials & help to identify the writer. Hey, we know it's a long shot but we like to search really deep for our research & build a better history for the shelters that form an important part of our heritage. We have tracked a family from other graffiti in the past, one being from the Devonport Park shelter that was partly demolished back in 2009. Writings in this shelter have given us some leads to work on including an address in Mount Gould Road.

The best we have to go on!

Any takers on this one?

Inscription found in another toilet block

One of two face drawings found close to each other

Face art

Character drawings

Mister Sad

Basketball?

Striking chin feature in this drawing

Contractor says fire engine, archeaologist says bus, we say it's a tram - How about you? Send us a comment below!

Although there was little graffiti, it was some of the most interesting. Clearly there were signs that the shelter had been whitewashed with a second coat at some point due to the way that some of the pencil markings were showing through & again highlights just how clean this shelter was. Whoever was in charge of it certainly took pride in it's appearance. Thankfully there were just a few artefacts that were left behind at various points along the underground passageways.

Artefacts found close to the entrance

Rusted, almost disintegrated bucket

Bottles from the wartime era

Bottled in Exeter

Bakealite junction boxes for electric lighting

Bench fixings void of timber seats

Bakealite fittings

Now personally for me, apart from the etched brick, the highlight was what the shelter was cut into above ground. Evidence of the Plymouth Leat was what the archeaologist's were said to be looking for & also the original cobbled surface of the car park had been revealed as see in the photos below. This shows how sympathetic the demolition has been of this shelter, a behind the scenes look at how little damage was done to the original structure itself. An escape hatch had been exposed & there were a couple of exploratory holes cut through the roof, but most impressive was the stairwell that had been throughly cleaned by contractors in preparation for the documentation to take place. 

This was always one of those shelters that would be demolished due to the need for development within the city centre, but at least it has been documented in a way that Plymothians can now see for themselves that it is not always wanton destruction of heritage. We were impressed with how thoughtful the contractors & Uni staff were toward the shelter & taking time to tell us their views on it's existence. A lot of people thought that this shelter was long demolished since the war, & it's highly possible that this was just infilled quickly & re-tarmaced before the end of the war & returned to it's use as a car park but, with all the madness of rebuilding the blitzed city it's highly possible that documents were lost along the way.

Stood atop the entrance to the shelter with Plymouth Museum in the background

Entrance overlooked by the Link & Davy Building

A different angle over the entrance

Original cobbled road that the shelter was constructed through

Stood on top of the shelter showing depth, cobbled road & contractors exploratory hole

Close up looking the cobble surface

Stood with our back to the previous image looking midway along the shelter & exposed escape hatch

Shelter looking toward the infilled end - notice the stone walls that the shelter has cut through

This section of the shelter cut through some sort of stone walling - could this be a trace of the leat?

Surveying the site stood atop the section that had yet to be uncovered fully above ground

There it is & we also made a short video tour of the shelter which will be uploaded soon for you to follow the passageways to the end. On a personal note this was an excellent shelter to document with the different layers of history around it & particularly pleased to see how the passageways cut though the cobbled road.

A lot of feedback has been received since the first photos appeared & we welcome feedback from as many people as possible, after all it is your support that will eventually lead to one of these time capsules to be saved. As we have already mentioned, many people had thought this one had long gone years ago so with the groundworks for a much needed new University building imminent, it would have suffered major setbacks if the shelter were to be kept & plans changed to adapt. Given better hindsight, if it could have been integrated into the new building as a permanent historic feature it would certainly have been one of the most interesting campus buildings in the world, food for thought!

"The Wall" Public Air Raid Shelter - Plymouth University

Back at the end of August, we were kindly notified by one our readers of yet another ARP shelter discovery at the site of a new building to be constructed on the Plymouth University Campus & we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to document it's passageways before demolition began. After our recent wedding we didn't get to go on honeymoon so what better way to spend a few hours down one of Plymouth's WWII time capsules & we would like to thank all involved for allowing this fantastic visit to happen. Following a recent aerial photo of the site kindly posted by Matt Sayer on our Facebook page, the reaction from some readers has caused quite a stir but full of positivity in support of saving one of the remaining ARP underground shelters in Plymouth. More of that in Part 2 but firstly let's concentrate on the shelter in question & in usual fashion we had to give it a name. Ladies & gents we give you "The Wall" Public ARP Shelter.

One of the original entrances opened up, exposing the stairwell & ready to document

As soon as I heard the news, it was a short visit to the loft followed by a couple of hours digging in crates for the Air Raid Precaution Charts that we have archived & sure enough, there it was on the Sector Map, originally sited under a car park on what was then Tavistock Road. Built to accommodate 280 people, construction began in September 1939 with completion just two months later on November 7th, 1939 at an estimated cost of £105,000. It was of the arch type & designed with damage limitation in mind, with left & right angles that would act as a baffle in the event of a direct hit, & hopefully reduce the number of fatalities. Around the corner today remains the Portland Square shelter & it's memorial to the 76 people who lost their lives & without this design, there would have been much more loss of life. We took a minute's silence during documenting to pay our own personal respects for the civilians that lost their lives, something we do in every shelter we visit.

The first section of seating are within the shelter

Stood inside toilet cubicle looking back to daylight from the entrance

Walking along to the next section reveals one of the escape hatches

Exploratory holes had initially been expertly cut through the roof giving the shelter the first sight of daylight in more than 60 years, also offering us rare natural lighting conditions to work in. For the last two passageways to the other infilled entrance though it was back to using torchlight & fingertip searches of the floor for any artefacts, of which we are pleased to say we documented a handful of items of interest, the best being two old bottles made in Exeter & Falmouth.

With the escape hatch showing daylight behind us, it's a different story for the remaining sections

Rusty bench fixings, an escape hatch & toilet cubicles

Turn right & we are at the end, looking at the Tavistock Road entrance with original infill

Bottles from the wartime era - made in Falmouth on the left & Exeter  on the right

What came as a surprise was actually how clean this shelter was left after resealing it, but we're glad that somebody had the ounce to leave a few items of interest for future generations to discover. Of the little graffiti found, it was interesting nonetheless & the best of which led to the choosing of it's nickname. This was the first time we had come across a toilet cubicle with only half a wall as opposed to full height seen in the photos above. This led us to believe that this was most likely the mens urinal where buckets would have been used. It's possible that this was also used as a store for the Warden, for first aid, safety escape tools & equipment such as stirrup pumps. Sadly there was no evidence of this left behind but.....a single brick in that wall was etched with something special.

The half wall toilet cubicle looks unassuming but on one brick on the rear side  is an inscription

The answer to this is that the person may still be alive today

At this point it made us think that we need to write deeper into into the visit but we wanted to give you a good look at the shelter from within. Please keep on reading for the remainder of our findings including some humorous drawings. Until then we leave you with this fantastic aerial shot of the site before demolition taken by Matt Sayer & posted on the Hidden Plymouth Facebook page.