Description
‘Don’t let this happen to Norwich’
A3 Poster (420mm x297). Digitally printed on fine 200gsm uncoated paper.
Sent via Royal Mail, packed in a tube.
A digitally cleaned copy of an original poster issued in Norwich in 1940 encouraging local residents to volunteer to the A.R.P. to maintain the fire watch.
Norwich suffered sporadic bombing throughout the war usually Tip and Run, with occasional more targeted attacks on industrial and military production sites and transport hubs.
During 1942 there was a series of much more severe attacks during the spring and summer, these were known as ‘The Baedeker Raids’, a long series of devastating attacks launched throughout the country against cities with some cultural or historical significance but lower strategic importance – usually these were cities with timber-framed buildings such as York, Exeter, Bath, Canterbury and Norwich, it is alleged that targets were picked that had appeared in the Baedeker Tourist Guides as culturally significant. Norwich still has a higher than average number of Medieval and Tudor buildings. The raids are widely accepted to be a reprisal for the RAF bombing of Lübeck in a similar manner during March 1942. The Baedeker Raids on Norwich caused a huge amount of damage to housing stock, killed hundreds and wounded hundreds more, with targets including rail infrastructure, the city centre and the population itself at home.
A.R.P. posts were scattered across the whole city, spotting and alerting to imminent attacks, as well as assisting in rescues and putting out fires. Often the A.R.P. wardens and fire-watchers put themselves in huge danger of injury and death, many were stationed at posts near their families and the area they lived dealing with the area they knew.
For anyone interested Museum of Norwich has a copy of the original poster in their archive.
You can also find out more about the raids here.
A digitised copy of the Bomb Map is here.
