Air Raid Shelters etc

I can't help but feel slightly envious that I'm too young to have been able to play in those old shelters! Must have been so much fun to explore post-war Coventry.

Hi William, I found a couple of Newspaper articles relating the locations of Air Raid shelters: •  13 March 1940 (Coventry Evening Telegraph): There is also a previous list (of the first few that were constructed in the previous year) at the very start of WW2- •  04 September 1939 (Coventry Evening Telegraph): An example of how the air raids looked is the one in London Road cemetery that has only just recently been taken down (in renovations and put back as a mortuary as was originally intended).

Hello, I'm scratching my head for accuracy of dates, but I think that the recreation grounds shelter in Radford were visited or in the news?????? My mum & dad were sheltering there, when their home No.18, Grangemouth Rd was destroyed or severely damaged.

I remember seeing an Anderson shelter in the back yard of a house in Coronation Road when I played with the kids who lived there in the 50s. I also remember when we lived in King Edward road we had a big dining room table and remember being told by my grandparents that that's where they used to shelter during an air raid.

Back in 1973 we moved into our first house in Holbrooks. In the back garden was a rather tatty shed so we decided that it had to go. Getting rid of the wooden bits was quite easy so I set to work with my rather small hammer to see how I got on with the concrete base. Initially the concrete crumbled easily and I was very pleased with myself. The next hammer blow resounded back up my arm as I struck something much harder. I had in fact uncovered the base of an Anderson shelter which had been slightly extended with poor concrete some time after the war to form the shed base. I borrowed a much bigger hammer but that wartime concrete would not shift, so when we sold the house a couple of years later the garden still featured a small concrete patio with the outline of the corrugated iron air raid shelter sides still visible. Many years later a builder told me that the concrete used in the war years was exceptionally strong!

Thanks very much. Would the Herbert (or another archive) be likely to hold any records on which ones may have been hit? I have found a few references to shelters collapsing and individuals being pulled out, or sometimes being left if an unexploded bomb was in the vicinity.

I'm unsure, this might be a question for another member. I believe there are bomb damage maps???? And I guess you could cross reference the locations with those of the shelters??? I know that in the London Road cemetery mortuary air raid shelter there was a near hit just outside the shelter. It was a somewhat of an unpleasant incident, as although I don't believe there were any injuries (I assume there were people in the shelter at the time?), the cemetery had to be closed the next day for reburials. The bomb location can be triangulated by looking at the shrapnel damage on the surrounding gravestones.

I'm intrigued by the mention of a trench shelter on Stivichall Common, a trench shelter big enough for 642 people. I grew up in Stivichall and was quite familiar with all of the nooks and crannies of the common, but can't recall any sign of a large trench there. There was, however, a large rubble-filled depression in the triangle of woods bordered by Kenilworth rd, the Memorial Park and Coat of Arms Bridge rd. Does this area count as the common? Was this depression the shelter?

Coventry Collections has been down since at least mid October, so if you want to send them a nudge, it might help speed things along. I don't know what it might hold. The Herbert might point you towards the National Archives but they're limited and the references are out of date. We have a list of the dead but not all are listed by location. There is an inner city bomb map below but bombed building does not necessarily equal damaged shelter. Bomb victim also doesn't necessarily mean they died in a shelter. It's one area where the newspapers during the war might not be any use, since it was probably censored.

David McGrory's Coventry's Blitz opening chapter mentions that 'in September 1938 between five and six hundred men began work digging air raid trenches in Spencer Park, Memorial Park, Stivichale Common, Primrose Hill Park, Radford Recreation ground, Moseley Avenue, Naul's Mill Park, Radford Common, Edgewick Recreation Ground, Hearsall Common, Whitley Common, Binley Road, Barras Heath, Longford Recreation Ground, Gosford Green, Livingstone Road, Cheylesmore Estate (above Quinton Pool), Bird Street, Holbrook Lane, Foleshill Park, Holbrook Lane, Greyfriar's Green and Corporation Street', noting that the 600 capacity shelter on Greyfriar's Green was the first to be built. Apparently they were basically deep trenches with wooden boards on top.