Dereham Road Baptist Church opened in 1904. Closed temporarily in 1942 during the Baedeker Raids. Sources point at this being a result of the first raid on the Monday night; the 27th of April; this would fit the pattern of most of the bombing being of the north and...
Outside Curls store, Rampant Horse Street corner with Brigg Street, 30th April 1942. They’re standing in the wreckage caused by the incendiary bombs that fell on Norwich on the second night of the Baedeker Raids on Norwich. So this is the 30th of April 1942. The...
St Benedicts Church, Norwich is quite hidden away, a sad little relic. The tower is still there, preserved like like a thick flint chimney, or a Cloigtheach except no bells ring here, It reminds me of Messines in Flanders too. It’s set in some grass just off St...
Aylsham Road, Norwich, April 1942 and nearly now, one of my first Norwich Ghosts. There are two pictures of the area. Both I believe taken by George Swain. The top Blitz Ghost is the first one I ever did, and the bottom one is the last. A 500kg landed here, it blew...
Oak Street & Sussex Street, Norwich, 1942. More scenes from the Norwich Blitz. Probably the morning of 28th April. Tough ones. I spent far longer trying to work out where it was than normal, and there’s story behind this scene that you will find below that...
More in the Blitz Ghosts Norwich series. I’m not sure where the above picture is exactly, Originally I thought it was possibly at Harford dump, which is where most of the defused stuff ended up, or it might be the depot in Ipswich, turns out it’s in Anchor...
St Augustines School 1940, a posed shot for George Swain as the children enact an air raid drill, there are a few others in this series, showing twisted lines of children waiting to enter, one of the other ones lines up with the wall and some door and windows behind...
Alexandra Road, another Norwich Blitz Ghost. A 250kg bomb took out about 4 properties, quite a precise slice, which is still very evident if you look at the row today the missing block was replaced with a more modern variant of the generic terrace, a pattern you can...
On the 28th April 1942 this was the result of a 1000kg Hermann that burst on what is now the traffic lights at the bottom of Grapes Hill. The men aren’t short, they standing in the edge of a hole that was rather wide and very deep caused by the blast a Herman...
One of the few real reminders of the blitz on Norwich that is easy to visit is the church of St Bartholomew, Heigham, Norwich, it’s quite easy to find sitting just of Heigham Street and Waterworks Road. On the night of the 27th of April 1942 when the first of...
This is Harmer’s Factory on St Andrews Broad Street in Norwich on the 18th March 1943 and the 2nd March 2012, almost seventy years., it’s also a weird bit of land with not much on it, sort of an entrance to a car park of sorts. Harmer’s was hit...
In 2012, I received a few emails from a chap called Tom Brittan who now lives in France. I”ll let him recount his story pretty much unedited; he lived just off the Unthank road and vividly remembers the bombs falling and the aftermath. My most vivid recollection...