Bombing aftermath

There is a thread on Air Raid Shelters etc here

With the new pictures added to the image library, there are a lot of new bomb damage photos, including some before the devastation was cleared.

Yes, only just had a chance to start looking at these, Helen. Do you think that building by the clock tower would've been on Market Street?

Britain from Above is down, Old Maps is gone. It'll take a while to work it out.

NeilsYard, yes the building would have been on Market Street. The first picture above was soldiers pushing the rubble to the side of the road, from the Fleet Street end, the very first morning after the raid - note there are no burnt timbers, no fires had occurred during the blitz, and no attempt to clear the road at night for any fire appliance. A stick of four bombs would have spread over the length of Smithford Street, so with the extensive damage to the street, it was hit many times, by many planes, to have caused that damage. The other picture was a few weeks after, the policeman watching and warning of workmen clearing dangerous buildings. The Easter bombings were not heavy enough to be called blitz.

Interestingly that second picture, when I first looked at it I thought that policeman could well be my dad, it does look like him. He was a special constable for the Gauge and Tool, although based in Albany Road he could have well been sent to the city. Do you know if specials would have had a police helmet? The only picture I have, he is wearing a hard hat.

Midland Daily Telegraph offices in Hertford Street

Neil, this picture shows the glass roof in your photo, half way up the left hand side. So yes, it's Market Street as we all thought, but not the corner with Market Place. It looks like number 24 on the old fire insurance map but 22 on Rob's version. It was vacant in 1933. I think it's the original location of the Market Vaults and is the building with the Milk Bar & Cafe in the picture in the link. I looks like it might have been rebuilt between 1933 and the war. There were lots of building changes and renumbering before the war and not enough maps drawn. Rob's fire insurance map

Another rare shot of the Smithford Street damage and especially The Kings Head - literally totally gutted.

Just to the left of centre you can see the building in the other photo. I've a feeling that this photo was taken slightly before the other one, as I think that they'd brought down the remaining iron work next to the cinema.

Helen, I hope this doesn't sound a silly question, but I wonder if, when salvaging all the bombed debris, any was used for further temporary development for cheap housing during or after the war. Surely it was not used for landfill. I am thinking you may know more about that.

It's a good question Dreamtime but I don't know the answer. Recycling bricks isn't as obvious as it sounds, particularly if the mortar originally used was good because you can't easily chip it off. Bricks varied in quality, style, size, colour and even aging. It wasn't necessarily a good idea to rebuild with dodgy stuff. Good slates and tiles would have been reused, not least for repairing roofs of standing buildings. Wood possibly went on people's fires, although painted wood would have been toxic - lead paint. I did wonder if the little walls built round the bomb damaged areas might have been built from the debris. Some interesting accounts of London and Bristol debris.

This is an ad from 1941. There are also several pieces asking for tenders for demolition and clearance of debris and salvage work.

I assume he is one half of "J & H B Jackson", the well-known Coventry scrap metal merchants

I believe there were a lot more buildings, both commercial and domestic that were demolished post war, to make way for redevelopment, or were badly damaged during the Blitz and were uninhabitable but were left until the 1950's / early 60's. I remember quite well the houses and old factories such as Rotherhams in the Spon Street/Butts area, right along Queens Road and Queen Victoria Road, Croft Road being demolished (and the fight by the residents of Starley Road to save that from demolition else that wouldn't be with us today). In fact a lot of the flats built in the 1960's around the Trafalgar Street/Vincent StreetWindsor Street area are now themselves due for demolition I understand. However I digress. I also remember the huge bonfires the demolition gangs made with roof timbers/skirtings and doors (proper solid wood ones, not hardboard on a light wooden frame which were in fashion at the time), stacks of 'Belfast sinks' and scrap merchants taking the cast iron cisterns, gutters, drainpipes etc. and slates/bricks all being loaded by mechanical shovel into the back of 'tipper trucks', destination unknown, although if I remember correctly a lot were dumped and grassed over on Whitley Park and the area of Four Pounds Avenue. I wonder what happened to the millions of bricks from the GEC Spon Street works, Standard Triumph and Humber factories went. I suspect in this day and age they are pulvarised. It makes one think where all the earth went when creating the Warwick By-Pass and latterly HS2!