# Did your street get bombed in WW2? Check this handy map



## Orang Utan (Dec 5, 2012)

http://bombsight.org
That's a lot of bombs!


----------



## colacubes (Dec 5, 2012)

Orang Utan said:


> http://bombsight.org
> That's a lot of bombs!


 
The one right opposite my flat seems to be there   That's a great site


----------



## Manter (Dec 5, 2012)

I love this!  fascinating

Their site is hiccuping


----------



## spacemonkey (Dec 5, 2012)

Jaysus Chroist!


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 5, 2012)

Orang Utan said:


> http://bombsight.org
> That's a lot of bombs!


that's a fucking good site. well done.


----------



## Mapped (Dec 5, 2012)

Looks like the luftwaffe leveled the ground for the park behind my house


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 5, 2012)

spacemonkey said:


> Jaysus Chroist!


99 red balloons...


----------



## harpo (Dec 5, 2012)

What a great site.

Loads of them on our road.


----------



## marty21 (Dec 5, 2012)

My street got bombed, plus loads of other local Hackney Streets.


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 5, 2012)

although this is a top site ou's posted up, you'll be able to find more information about the individual incidents through a variety of offline sources, namely the london county council bomb damage maps, the originals of which are held at the london metropolitan archives and which were printed as a book by the london topographical society in 2005, various chronologies and histories of the blitz (eg hackney at war), and records held by your local archives. although various metropolitan boroughs had different ways of recording bomb damage, with eg hackney photographing pretty much every site but shoreditch and stoke newington recording the incidents solely in files, a better idea of your local damage can be arrived at through their assistance. the bomb damage maps can be useful in showing the actual damage caused by individual attacks which is something ou's link doesn't do.


----------



## Maurice Picarda (Dec 5, 2012)

I was wondering why it was only the grottier bits of Southgate that got bombed, but of course the 30s semis that took hits were presumably replaced with 50s flats - "homes fit for heroes", in the parlance.


----------



## Puddy_Tat (Dec 5, 2012)

similar thing for the V1 / V2 campaign here (warning, includes sound of V1 - anyone who was alive at the time and heard one cutting out is likely to be nervous about such things)

there is a detailed map that was prepared by the LCC showing bomb damage at the end of 1945 - many local studies libraries have a copy - one or two reprints have been done but are hard to get hold of (ETA - as pickman's model said while I was trying to find references)


----------



## twentythreedom (Dec 5, 2012)

Fucking Luftwaffe bombed my weed dealer's gaff by the looks of it


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 5, 2012)

Also on Lambeth Landmark, if you put 'incident' into the search box you'll get loads of bomb damage photos.


----------



## Sue (Dec 5, 2012)

Two pretty much right next to my flat. Guess that's why it's all estates round here.


----------



## Stigmata (Dec 5, 2012)

marty21 said:


> My street got bombed, plus loads of other local Hackney Streets.


 
Amhurst Road seems like a relatively lucky address


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Dec 5, 2012)

Got a fucking big crack in one wall says they did.


----------



## Manter (Dec 5, 2012)

found my old flat and low and behold, its a bomb crater... which is why it was built in the first place.  Oddly satisfying to have suspicion confirmed


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 5, 2012)

Good to see they're superimposed onto a modern map. So many road names and layouts have changed.


----------



## Orang Utan (Dec 5, 2012)

It's fascinating innit?


----------



## editor (Dec 5, 2012)

That's an excellent find - I've flagged it up on my blog for Brixtonites. Cheers OU!


----------



## editor (Dec 5, 2012)

My place suffered a direct hit!

Ruddy Germans


----------



## marty21 (Dec 5, 2012)

Stigmata said:


> Amhurst Road seems like a relatively lucky address


If you walk around streets in Stoke Newington and Clapton, you can sometimes see the route of the bombs - victorian terraces interupted by newer housing - which was built after WW2


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 5, 2012)

Oh. Where I'm living got a direct hit high explosive bomb  They got the postcode wrong though.


----------



## colacubes (Dec 5, 2012)

Mrs Magpie said:


> Oh. Where I'm living got a direct hit high explosive bomb  They got the postcode wrong though.


 
Obvious from just looking at the architecture down my road where there was a direct hit.  All 1890s apart from right opposite my place which is 50s/60s.


----------



## Manter (Dec 5, 2012)

Mrs Magpie said:


> Oh. Where I'm living got a direct hit high explosive bomb  They got the postcode wrong though.


some of the bombs you can click through to more info, and some crash....  the ones with more info you can trace back to old road layouts etc (just did it with one near piccadilly so the stuff was online)  I wonder if the postcode stuff is related to that?

OU, this is fab


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 5, 2012)

Sue said:


> Two pretty much right next to my flat. Guess that's why it's all estates round here.


you might think that, but it's not necessarily the case. the site ou's posted is a good start for research, but it doesn't tell you all about an incident nor the subsequent history of the site. if you looked at post-war 1:1250 ordnance survey maps, you will be able to see what happened. some areas will have five or six post-war surveys, others one or two: but the map collections at either your local archives or the london metropolitan archives will be able to tell you if it was bombs or subsequent clearance.


----------



## lighterthief (Dec 5, 2012)

Awesome site


----------



## spitfire (Dec 5, 2012)

Ze Germans created a rather nice park opposite my house for young tearaways to smoke weed and shout at each other.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> you might think that, but it's not necessarily the case.


Quite. Like that quote: Bloomsbury was raped twice. Once by the Luftwaffe and once by the London University.


----------



## Manter (Dec 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> you might think that, but it's not necessarily the case. the site ou's posted is a good start for research, but it doesn't tell you all about an incident nor the subsequent history of the site. if you looked at post-war 1:1250 ordnance survey maps, you will be able to see what happened. some areas will have five or six post-war surveys, others one or two: but the map collections at either your local archives or the london metropolitan archives will be able to tell you if it was bombs or subsequent clearance.


and of course anyone who didn't watch the london streets documentaries should youtube them right away


----------



## Sue (Dec 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> you might think that, but it's not necessarily the case. the site ou's posted is a good start for research, but it doesn't tell you all about an incident nor the subsequent history of the site. if you looked at post-war 1:1250 ordnance survey maps, you will be able to see what happened. some areas will have five or six post-war surveys, others one or two: but the map collections at either your local archives or the london metropolitan archives will be able to tell you if it was bombs or subsequent clearance.


 
Thanks. Interested to find out more to be honest. Are the Hackney archives in the new library? (Which I've still not been into, go to the one next to the town hall.)


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 5, 2012)

Mrs Magpie said:


> Quite. Like that quote: Bloomsbury was raped twice. Once by the Luftwaffe and once by the London University.


you can't blame london university for the brunei gallery.


----------



## Mapped (Dec 5, 2012)

OU cheers for posting this. I've had a poke around the site and one of my uni lecturers seems to be involved in this  project. We got much more boring coursework off her than this stuff


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 5, 2012)

N1 Buoy said:


> OU cheers for posting this. I've had a poke around the site and one of my uni lecturers seems to be involved in this project. We got much more boring coursework off her than this stuff


what surprises me is that the national archives have been involved with this, but the london boroughs and the london metropolitan archives, with all their wealth of information about the blitz, haven't been.


----------



## Hocus Eye. (Dec 5, 2012)

To my surprise there are about a dozen sites of bombs within walking distance of my place and I live out in the sticks!


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 5, 2012)

oh - and there's no bomb incident data on this site from before 7/10/1940 or after 06/1941 - so no doodlebugs or v2s. and there were a lot of those...


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 5, 2012)

Yes, I noticed that too


----------



## Mapped (Dec 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> what surprises me is that the national archives have been involved with this, but the london boroughs and the london metropolitan archives, with all their wealth of information about the blitz, haven't been.


 
1st stage maybe? 

You could link loads of digitised archival material to the blast points to create a great online geographic WWII resource


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 5, 2012)

N1 Buoy said:


> 1st stage maybe?
> 
> You could link loads of digitised archival material to the blast points to create a great online geographic WWII resource


money too... hammersmith & fulham share westminster's archive space, but while you don't need an appointment to use westminster's archives, hammersmith's are effectively shut. and tower hamlets archives are closed (again!) for refurbishment... but afaik none of the boroughs have been approached by jisc or the national archives.


----------



## skyscraper101 (Dec 5, 2012)

yeah, it was like a bomb site.


----------



## Minnie_the_Minx (Dec 5, 2012)

I was looking at this the other week, and it worked fine.  Now, it's not


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 5, 2012)

Minnie_the_Minx said:


> I was looking at this the other week, and it worked fine. Now, it's not


You broked it


----------



## Minnie_the_Minx (Dec 5, 2012)

Mrs Magpie said:


> You broked it


 
It was the North Londoners that broke it   (I was looking up bombs in Finsbury)


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> oh - and there's no bomb incident data on this site from before 7/10/1940 or after 06/1941 - so no doodlebugs or v2s. and there were a lot of those...





N1 Buoy said:


> 1st stage maybe?
> 
> You could link loads of digitised archival material to the blast points to create a great online geographic WWII resource


There's an explanation on the FAQ page


----------



## wiskey (Dec 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> oh - and there's no bomb incident data on this site from before 7/10/1940 or after 06/1941 - so no doodlebugs or v2s. and there were a lot of those...


 
the obvious bomb site at the end of the road I grew up in isn't there, I'm presuming that's because it fell outside the specified date range.

Interesting site though.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 5, 2012)

wiskey said:


> the obvious bomb site at the end of the road I grew up in isn't there, I'm presuming that's because it fell outside the specified date range.
> 
> Interesting site though.


Ditto for the house opposite where I grew up, and the doodlebug that narrowly missed my Gran and Uncle (she threw him in a ditch and lay on top of him).


----------



## Roadkill (Dec 6, 2012)

The bit of Charlton I lived in got a bit of a pounding - I wasn't surprised to find.  Nothing on my old street itself, but the site seems to confirm my old hunch that most of one side of the next street was demolished.  Charlton station was destroyed by a doodlebug in 1944.

There's a fair bit of post-war infill - and the last secular unredeveloped bomb site in the country - round my way now too.


----------



## tommers (Dec 6, 2012)

Puddy_Tat said:


> similar thing for the V1 / V2 campaign here (warning, includes sound of V1 - anyone who was alive at the time and heard one cutting out is likely to be nervous about such things)


 
Yes. V1 demolished the houses right next to ours. They were rebuilt, but in a different style. When we took the wallpaper off in our bedroom we found a huge crack running up from window sill to ceiling - must have been from that.


----------



## Firky (Dec 6, 2012)

The webserver must be getting hammered as it's very slow this afternoon.


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 6, 2012)

Maurice Picarda said:


> I was wondering why it was only the grottier bits of Southgate that got bombed, but of course the 30s semis that took hits were presumably replaced with 50s flats - "homes fit for heroes", in the parlance.


homes fit for heroes were ww1: wrong war in other words


----------



## ash (Dec 6, 2012)

firky said:


> The webserver must be getting hammered as it's very slow this afternoon.


Probably because it was in the Fail today are any urbanites Daily Mail readers and tipped them off???


----------



## _angel_ (Dec 6, 2012)

Yes this street got bombed I saw something on the internet. I had no idea these houses were actually that old!


----------



## moochedit (Dec 6, 2012)

can't get site to work at the moment?  is this only doing london or all of uk?

As i live in Coventry, i guess it's highly likely my street was bombed.


----------



## Garek (Dec 6, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> you might think that, but it's not necessarily the case. the site ou's posted is a good start for research, but it doesn't tell you all about an incident nor the subsequent history of the site. if you looked at post-war 1:1250 ordnance survey maps, you will be able to see what happened. some areas will have five or six post-war surveys, others one or two: but the map collections at either your local archives or the london metropolitan archives will be able to tell you if it was bombs or subsequent clearance.


 
Like with Coventry. Luftwaffe and post war planners always get the blame yet they were ripping down old bits bofore the war.


----------



## Roadkill (Dec 6, 2012)

Garek said:


> Like with Coventry. Luftwaffe and post war planners always get the blame yet they were ripping down old bits bofore the war.


 
They were, but there's not a lot of doubt that the blitz presented town planners with an opportunity to be more radical in reshaping cities.


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 6, 2012)

Garek said:


> Like with Coventry. Luftwaffe and post war planners always get the blame yet they were ripping down old bits bofore the war.


 i think you'll find that a lot of the clearance in the 1930s was slum clearance, with - at least in london - the erection of large london county council estates.


----------



## Garek (Dec 6, 2012)

Roadkill said:


> They were, but there's not a lot of doubt that the blitz presented town planners with an opportunity to be more radical in reshaping cities.


 
Oh no absolutely. Just saying that usually  there is an emphahsis that it was without precedent iyswim.


----------



## Puddy_Tat (Dec 7, 2012)

something on newsnight about this now


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 7, 2012)

Yeah, it's been all over Radio 4 today as well.


----------



## skyscraper101 (Dec 7, 2012)

and BBC London.


----------



## Plumdaff (Dec 7, 2012)

I wasn't at all surprised to see that I am literally sat here on a bombsite but there were three more bombs just on this little stretch of street - and as previously said, that map only covers some of the war. How sobering, as how terrifying.


----------



## Orang Utan (Dec 7, 2012)

It only covers the blitz, an intense bombing campaign for sure, but only a tiny part of the whole war


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 7, 2012)

lagtbd said:


> I am literally sat here on a bombsite


 Me too. Sobering thought.


----------



## RaverDrew (Dec 7, 2012)

Same here, and it kinda makes sense now why all the other houses on my street are a lot older than this one. I'd never really thought about it before.


----------



## RoyReed (Dec 8, 2012)

Don't forget they're only marking the larger high explosive bombs and not the hundreds of thousands of incendiary bombs that did even more damage overall.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 8, 2012)

RoyReed said:


> Don't forget they're only marking the larger high explosive bombs and not the hundreds of thousands of incendiary bombs that did even more damage overall.


Not quite, there's parachute bombs on there too, which aren't high explosive, I don't think.


----------



## RoyReed (Dec 8, 2012)

I think the parachute bombs were actually naval mines which were high explosive and did very large amounts of damage because they tended to explode at roof or ground level rather than have some of the blast smothered when a 'normal' bomb penetrated the ground.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Dec 8, 2012)

Thanks for that...I never knew that was what killed Al Bowlly, either.


----------



## goldenecitrone (Dec 12, 2012)

The blighters bombed Abney Park Cemetry. Bit of a wasted one to be fair.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Dec 12, 2012)

marty21 said:


> If you walk around streets in Stoke Newington and Clapton, you can sometimes see the route of the bombs - victorian terraces interupted by newer housing - which was built after WW2


 
Same with some of the riverside parts of Battersea, and the railside parts of Clapham Junction.


----------

