Templemeads Station

A Memory of Bristol.

My father was working on Templemeads Station around the time it was bombed, I have the feeling it was a Saturday night in the summer of 1942.  I was about four years old and we were lodging in a house by the Avon with a cellar and several storeys as my mother had decided that Bristol was safer than London.
 Unfortunately the raids started almost as soon as we arrived.  We had to  spend our nights in the Anderson shelter in the garden but my father decided we would be safer at the railway station with him where he was moving troop trains at night.(!).  Fortunately as it later happened he was injured on the line the night before the bombing and had to stay at  home so we went back into the Anderson in the garden.  In the morning, although I did not know it, Templemeads was destroyed with great loss of life.
I have other memories which may be of interest to Bristol readers such as a vivid view from the steps of the house of a dogfight overhead.  I don't think I was supposed to have come up from the cellar but my mother had gone to a standpipe for water.  My mother, after about a week, decided Bristol was not safer than London after all and we went to Clevedon.  Does anyone remember the shop that displayed wedding dresses in its window despite many surrounding buildings being destroyed?  I remember I was put through to the front of the crowd that gathered in front of the window.  I do hope this will jog someone's memory and they can help fill in some dates and blanks for me. I would like to pass some wartime memories for my grandchildren.  Thank you Anne

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