Air Raid

A Memory of Potters Bar.

I was born in Laurel Avenue in 1936 and lived there until 1959. During the war we were bombed out of our house following an air raid during the night, when German bombers were trying to cut the main line between London and Edinburgh. A large bomb fell on No. 46 Laurel Avenue and totally destroyed that, and severely damaged others nearby. That night, my mother, sister and I were sleeping under a bed in the front room of our house at No. 40, a raid had been forecast hence we were taking safety precautions, and I was woken up when the chimney stack collapsed down through the house, and we were all trapped until rescued by Air Raid Wardens who had a base further down Laurel Avenue. My father was at work so had no immediate knowledge or our predicament. The following day we were housed temporarily down in the Cranbourne area, until a ground floor flat was provided in Strafford Gate, where we spend the rest of the war. Our house was patched up and leased out to a family from London who had lost their house, and then when the war was over, our house was 'repaired' and we moved back in. I remember too, sitting in the kitchen in Strafford Gate on a Sunday morning, when there was a tremendous explosion and we later learned that a doodlebug had landed on a church hall near to the High Street/Southgate Road causing deaths and injuries.