The Second World War

A Memory of Woodford Bridge.

There was an air raid shelter under the green opposite the Three Jolly Wheelers pub. It comprised a number of concrete passageways. My mother my sister and I would use it on occasions when there was a particularly bad air raid. I remember it as damp and musty with bunks lined up against one wall of each passageway and side passages that contained a small kitchen and first aid areas. These were manned by air raid wardens. At the end of the war a celebration took place on the green and an effigy of Hitler was burned hanging from the tree opposite the Three Jolly Wheelers.

During the war my mother, sister and I lived at 19 Claybury Road, Woodford Bridge. When we were not in the public shelter on the green we would spend the air raids sleeping in a Morrison shelter in the front bedroom. An oil bomb landed in our back garden but did not explode correctly and it left a large oil stain on the back wall of our flat, it may be still there today under any new paint that has been put on.

One summer evening during the period of the bombing my friends and I lit a fire in the Bluebell Dell which was a small spinney at the top of Claybury Road. The neighbours and particularly my mother were very annoyed as they believed the German bomber pilots would see the fire and use it as a marker to drop their bombs. For this indescretion my mother caned my legs.

So many stories so many memories.