Introduction

At seven-fifteen on Wednesday 11^th December 1940 I was twelve years old and my mates and I were holding a Gang meeting in a

pigeon shed in Marsden Road. Suddenly we heard a loud blast from a bomb exploding. We had been warned of possible air raids so

we closed the meeting and went home. My row of houses, which faced Glover street, did not have an air raid shelter; so together with

my Mother, we went over into Heywood's Factory and into the lower level storerooms, this was permitted by the Factory Owners for

anyone who did not have an Air Raid Shelter.

The rescue teams brought some of the Glover Street survivors for treatment to the Heywood’s factory. We knew these rooms because

we used to play and trespass there and drink water from the dispensers. This knowledge turned out to be of some use, because the

first aiders enlisted our knowledge to draw water from the dispensers to clean the survivor's eyes. The houses in Marsden Road

opposite the bomb blast, had most of their windows sucked out, possibly caused by the vacuum from the bomb and other minor damage

We subsequently found that six bombs had fallen on the area.

Bomb 1. Fell on a patch of allotment land the other side of a wall below Kathleen Place, a block of five houses sited just below Izods

Yard and the Plough & Harrow Public House sited at the junction of Evesham Street and Ipsley Street. Ken Vale lived in Kathleen

Place and Ken’s father who was facing out of the window lost one eye and severely damaged the other as a result of the first bomb.

My wife's uncle Albert Shaw lived in this area also. He was confined to bed with terminal TB and the blast from the bomb collapsed

the ceilings onto the bed and down to the ground floor. Albert survived. I know of no immediate deaths from this bomb.

Bomb 2. Fell on six terraced houses in Glover Street, numbers 24 to 14, right hand side of street, opposite Heywood Compressor,

(The company changed in 1946 to Hymatic Engineering). There were six fatalities, four adults and two young boys, each aged about

7 years. The boy living in Glover Street had been evacuated from Coventry to Redditch to the care of relatives for greater safety; he

was found beneath the Table (possibly sheltering, as was the normal practice). The other young boy lived in a row of ten terraced

houses numbered 14 to 32; which face onto Marsden Road, but with the backs of these houses openly exposed onto the bomb site.

A family, possibly name Elin's had two young daughters and a younger son. On the night of 11th December 1940 the two young

daughters had received their bath in the old style tin bath. They were about to up the stairs to bed but had stopped to watch their

younger brother being dried in front of the fire following his bath, when shrapnel from the bomb came through the back door jamb, the

living room door, and removed his face.

Bomb 3. Fell in the gardens between Nos 107 in Lodge Road and No 49 in Millsboro Road. There was a public right of way (which is

still there) adjacent to and parallel with these two houses gardens. They had the smaller type of Air Raid Shelter in the garden with

the back facing the public pathway. The shelter was not destroyed but we could not see the entrance to the shelter, it was possibly

blocked because the escape exit at the back of the shelter which we could see had been opened. No loss of life.

Bomb 4. Fell on the Ash Path, a Public Right of way, which gave access from Millsboro’ Road to over the fields from the bottom of

Lodge road, this path led up to Lodge Farm and the Lodge Ponds. We did not go to School on the morning of the 12th December and

so consequently we roved all the sites that had craters. We did have to attend school in the afternoon either. This is one of the sites

from which we collected Shrapnel, (see photo)

Bomb 5. Fell between on the boundary of two fields, the first field being the sports field, both a Cricket and a Football field for the

Britannia Batteries, and an uphill field which was a sheep and cattle grazing field for the Lodge farm. A tree was down, but the bomb

had missed the Brittania Batteries water pumping station, a facility which supplied clean water from a deep well. I think that there is a

good chance that we were the first to this site, to collect more shrapnel there.

Bomb 6 The location of bomb 6 is unknown

We were later informed following the bombing, rightly or wrongly, that this single German bomber had lost the main bomber force and was itself returning alone to France. He has either jettisoned his bomb load, or, seeing the Britannia Batteries factory, had aimed for it. The add-on to this information was that this lone bomber had been shot down over the English Channel.

Britannia Batteries experienced a large fire one evening some years later, just after the All-Clear had sounded, which resulted in considerable damage to the Works.

There were other bombs and Incendiary bombs dropped on Redditch during the War but in general, Redditch didn't do too badly. We stood at the top of Marsden Road when Coventry was bombed and watched the reflection of the Burning.
The fields shown on the map are now mainly Residential property, and where the Britannia Batteries stood there is now the Mosque, B&Q, ASDA and MATALAN. etc. This map is circa late 1941.