London Bomb Damage Map 1939-45

[David Posnett]

There is no specific incident listed - Pvt message me with your email an I will attached a copy of Abbotts Road damage, but there is no indication of the dates.  No wonder it was renumbered, there was a lot of damage.  I have looked at old maps, and cant see any that show the actual house numbers.

[dawnsh]

The LMA exhibition has finished

The LCC bomb damage maps feature in our current exhibition War in London, which runs until 27 April 2016

[Copper1]

I found researching WWII in London very moving.  I was trying to find out whether there had been a 'near miss' close to my grandparents' house in Kings Road, Leytonstone (where they were in the 1939 with my unmarried father).

Family legend says that my Gran was so disturbed by a neighbour being bombed that she left London and moved to Somerset to be close to her other son in Autumn 1940.  This enabled my father and mother to get married in February 1941, as they 'inherited' all the furniture - a critical factor in those days to let you get married!

I looked at all the Civilian deaths in the location, and found some very sad results, including that the area where my primary school subsequently stood was evidently on the site of a cluster of bombs which decimated a group of streets in Leytonstone.

Didn't manage to pin down which neighbour might have been bombed/killed, but by addresses and Google Streetview that many of the houses which I knew well in my childhood must have been built on bomb sites.

Igor trust you stil visit Roots Chat

I came across your post just today and took note being a resident of Waltham Forest.
You do not seem to have been made aware that the borough museum at Vestry House Walthamstow has the original Leyton Civil Defence Bomb Plotter's map. I have a good working knowledge of it from notes I made many years ago.
So, There was one HE bomb which fell in Queen's Road close to numbers 2-8: mid September 1940 (no casualties) and one that fell in Mid October close to numbers 4-8 King's Road (demolished no 6 & rebuilt as 6a/6b also no casualties. NB Opposite numbers 4-8 are still the original nos 33-37 and show no 'typical' signs of post war rebuilding. The link I have supplied below clearly shows the bomb damage alteration to the building-line of no 6. Such alterations in building lines of terrace housing is a good chance to match it up with underserved the WW2 German air raids over Great Britain. Many houses in King's Road at the time of 1939 Register were unoccupied but I can't judge at which number your family were living at the time.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5708096,0.0060036,3a,75y,27.17h,90.63t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sDAc1JECWvDRI-5ARneaLKA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DDAc1JECWvDRI-5ARneaLKA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D347.10767%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

Considering how close both King's Road & Queen's Road were to a couple of active railway lines it is not unusual to find the area was the subject of target bombing. As we learnt much later, the Germans had been carrying out aerial surveillance from the mid 1930's !

[IgorStrav]

Thank you very much Copper1 - yes I'm still around here!

I was brought up in Bulwer Road, Leytonstone, close to both Kings and Queens Road, and from there walked to secondary school down Hainault Road towards the forest.

My primary school was on the other side of the railway, in Vernon and Harold Roads (from memory that is!) and I can recall discovering that its site was as a result of bomb damage.

I had a friend who lived in a modern house in the midst of some standard older houses (I think in Wallwood Road, would now have to check), and it was always said that these houses were on the sites of those which had been bombed.

Thank you very much for highlighting the Vestry House Museum contents, and I will have another virtual walk round the area (I'm now in Oxford) to see what I can remember.

I see that my grandparents and father were at 14 Kings Road in the 1939 so they were indeed very close to the bomb you mention at numbers 4-8 in the same road.  I've just looked at it and seen the 'new' houses a couple of doors away. 

That must have been a traumatic time for my Gran - which, in the strange way that these things happen, indirectly led to my parents' marriage and the birth of my brother and myself.