Maps - Week 6: 52 Ancestors: The Southampton Blitz

Bombing of Southampton in November 1940

In 1940, my father Bob Tucker was still smarting over his rejection by the Army on medical grounds a year earlier.  He could have been in Egypt with some of his workmates, defending Britain, his country of birth.

It wasn’t until 1941 that he was required to sign up.  Wearing spectacles didn’t matter by the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

Meanwhile, his mother Edith Annie Tucker was probably thankful - for the first time - that she no longer lived in her hometown Southampton where two of her sisters, Harriet and Kate still lived or indeed in London where two more sisters - Alice and Minnie - lived.

In 1940, Germany commenced bombing raids on London and other English towns.  As England’s premier military port and the home of the spitfire manufacturing, Southampton was a sitting duck for the German air raids. Starting in 1939, many children were evacuated to inland towns in neighbouring counties.

In June 1940, the anticipated air raids began. Many of the attacks were during the day, targeting manufacturing plants such as the Supermarine factory in the suburb of Bitterne where the Spitfires were manufactured.  The work was later spread throughout Southampton and environs but the Germans obviously had good information since these locations were subject to attacks as were air-raid shelters to which the workers would flee.

Later that year on November 30 and December 1, 700 bombs rained down on the docks and the commercial city areas.  This became known as the Southampton Blitz.  In 2016, the Ordnance Survey created a map that shows where each of those 700 bombs fell on those two dreadful nights. The National Archives and the Southampton City Council provided significant assistance to the Ordnance Office to produce the map, shown above.

My great aunt Harriet, a teacher and my great aunt Kate, formerly a bookbinder and by that time both in their 50s and 60s, must have been terrified. Although both were married, neither of them had children.  They remained in Southampton, doing what they could and later writing and sending care packages to my father in New Guinea.  Both of them remembered my father fondly, having assisted my grandmother feed and cloth him after she was widowed in 1919.

Two decades earlier, my father’s Reed grandmother, mother and aunts had been running a tea room and confectionery business in East Street, trading out of the debt left after their master baker father had died prematurely in 1915.  It had closed, debt-free after their mother died in 1924.  But nevertheless, they would have grieved the devastation of East Street, a thriving commercial centre in1940. Their Rose grandfather, George Henry, a butcher had died at 19-20 East Street in 1901 with his Reed family by his side.

Rose and Roger descendants were busily running their pork butchery in Upper Canal Walk, as was still-young widow Edith Tucker, my great grandfather’s second wife in the Canal Walk music dealership she inherited in 1924. The Blitz saw the end of those businesses. Eventually, East Street was renewed as a shopping centre but the area around Upper Canal Walk is now an ugly car park.

St Michael's steeple in middle of photo

Many of the churches they attended in the 19th century became smoking ruins, except for St Michael’s at the end of Vyse Lane where John Rose’s large family lived for three decades in the mid-19th century.  It has been said that the German pilots used its steeple as a landmark, enabling them to target specific buildings including the Civic Centre.

A family tale is that John Rose would take sanctuary in St Michael’s for hours or sometimes days whilst he was bringing in favours to pay his various fines and gambling debts.

The large church of St Mary’s, where many of my father’s ancestors were baptised was restored, but many other churches were not.  In fact, the Old Town within and Below the Walls on its perimeter is now a sad mixture of 1960’s residential Council flats, what remains of the old Town Walls and heritage buildings which somehow missed the severe damage or were able to be restored.

One benefit of the bombing is that the reparation effort after the war accelerated the housing renewal program.  Many of my ancestors endured extremely insanitary,  otherwise unhealthy and crowded housing, whilst others who could afford it - successful small business people - moved further out to London Road to the north and Fremantle, a new suburb in the Edwardian period.  Many of the poorer townsfolk had been living in long-condemned houses.

Altogether, more than 30,000 incendiaries and 2,300 bombs were dropped on homes, shops and factories, as well as port and military installations in Southampton and 631 people, were killed.  A further 898 were seriously injured and 1,000 houses were destroyed.

No wonder the Southampton my father left in 1924 was no longer recognisable and the street map had completely changed by the time I first visited in 1974.

References

 

Southampton Blitz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton_Blitz#  accessed 22/1/21

Mapped, the horror of the Blitz  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3339431/Map-shows-locations-700-Nazi-bombs-fell-Southampton-height-Blitz.html, accessed 22/1/22

Mapping the Southampton Blitz  https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/mapping-the-southampton-blitz-70-years-on